stilted words
stillborn
slide out
from torn
slash flesh
blood red
lipstick mouth
spews out
bloodless ugly triplets
‘I / love / you’
I choose ‘I’
not love
not you
not seeing eye to eye
but
fighting tooth for tooth
forebears cry out
they see
everything
from top
of swaying
family tree
daant ke lie daant
don’t lie Continue reading “Hir Qing Sorrow by Iain Fraser”
![suescavo[again][tosurgerise]1a](https://burninghousepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/suescavoagaintosurgerise1a.jpg?w=736)
If I am made
in the image of God no wonder
I have a black hole head boundaries
blurred my body unfolding shape
shifting some days I look in
mirrors thinking Jesus Christ is
that my face other days I see through
my lover’s eyes a shade garden
in my throat bleeding heart dicentra
collarbones dripping with corydalis lutea
each blossom ink I read only birdsong
my chest an aperture to root to ground Continue reading “3 Poems by Jericho Hockett”
[CN: suicidal ideation]
Anger
There is an anger inside of me
that claws its way out of me
One that tears apart the demon asleep on my tongue
My lungs are a raging lava
My blood boils
My self-control is not so loyal.
What if I just unleash the beast
Sometimes, I wanna show them my claws
I wanna show them I can stand up for myself
fight-or-flight
fight-or-flight
no, fight fight fight
I wanna sink my fangs into the throat of their ignorance
Drag their egos through the mud because dirt does not
discriminate against –
it buries.
And all flesh tastes the same to the maggots
sometimes I want to crush their bones
into dust.
They think of themselves gods
but everyone is the same height when
their faces are in the ground
sometimes
sometimes Continue reading “Anger by Amal”
[CN: mention of rape/assault]
Ravenous Bird Brain
He thinks you’re a rape magnet,
a strangled portal for revenge,
but you aren’t. Really you are
a ruptured dome filled with crows.
A dream moving through a book
held by a local pagan,
in which every bookmark can fly
and bite the lines of what tried to kill it.
If he thought he could ban us for life,
wait until he sees all the pages under his bed
at night, crawling up the ceiling and then
dive bombing his ears.
Revising his neckline
into a pathogenic birdbath.
The only real way to sleep. Do you believe
rainbows come from atlas? So do stars
but stars are dead. So is God.
What sort of constellation
will forgive him or form a concentric shape
that rains down upon men?
Gargoyles
Watercolor on paper, 2015
∞ Continue reading “4 Visual Poems by Angela Rodriguez and Joseph Ellison Brockway”
Exodus II
I climbed up
to shout you from the rooftop.
Fingernails and scrabbling feet
searching for a place to stand
immersed in the visions flowing from
your daydreams and nightmares.
But before I could speak,
the desert heat baked your words
leaving them flat and tasteless.
Bread with no meaning to make it rise.
Alone, watched only
by the blind eye of the sun
I told myself, “Climb down.” Continue reading “Exodus II by Paul Bluestein”
Sing Me the Song
after John Lyon
When the exiled pioneers stared at the Salt Lake Valley, they drank clean air. A sky framed by Nature’s Bulwark presumed their own. They slept in the open next to trees in the crux of the canyon, and night came. An armistice with ground, as each fire began to smell less and less like Buffalo chips. Crowded by the grid system, I search for a street where I am not spied on by a steeple. Imperfect Zion sleeping in Pioneer Park.
Nor the Sound of pollution voice is heard?
I am the visitor, welcome on the back row with handshake full of grease brought again to sacrament meeting. Ceiling fans spin backward the longer I stare. Hymnodic. I remember as a kid, a deacon, I once put Sprite in the cups for sacrament’s water. Nursery tastes like blessings.
But where shall we find this fairy vale
Where the naked are clothed and the hungry fed Continue reading “2 Poems by Jeff Pearson”
Labyrinth Song
Not everyone enters
their maze on a mission.
Some of us wake one day
curled inside a darkness
that stretches in all directions
for countless miles caught
in a lacework cage reaching
beyond years.
…………………Ever winding
we wander half blind
through rotting corridors
searching for signs of life
stumbling over pits that beckon
beneath wearied feet
in the yawning velvet dark
wrestling
with dead ends that glint
with knives and chains
slamming shut doors
that open silently
into nothingness
…………………chasing golden
voices not our own over
floors that sharpen suddenly
into spikes through
mirrored courtyards where
we glimpse our aging faces
catch sad minotaurs
behind our eyes.
We become adept
at surviving stripped
of all but our existence
at times weaving
the gleaming edges of pain
into armour and amulets
fortifying our bones Continue reading “Labyrinth Song by Lucy Whitehead”
Just a Thought
For the warming comfort of snow,
to thaw that which has been left frigid,
to repress is to die,
refrain and move on,
this is life persisting,
death meanders on,
run ragged,
pursue more,
a salivating void of all emotion,
numb to escape,
place distance between what happened
and any attachment to it,
two contradictory planes of existence,
abandon “your” self, rid the vessel of “my” anything, Continue reading “2 Poems by Kevin R. Farrell, Jr.”
You and I, we should go to the tar pits. Let’s stare at what was once life. We’ll inch closer together, becoming one creature, an unconscious attempt to metastasize in the face of ancient grandeur. I’ll wonder if they – the mastodons – ever thought about the end of the world. You and I do, all the time, but alone. Doomsday would take on the lure of a sunset if we endured it together, I’m convinced.
A conversation I sometimes imagine begins:
I’m so glad you take care of yourself. My father died when he was younger than you.
More staring at life.
I’m so sorry, you’ll say. Doesn’t everyone start there? But you’ll mean it, understand it, because,
You know my mother – you’ll begin.
I know, I’ll say, her death unspoken. Continue reading “La Brea by Sarah Neilson”
Hocus Pocus
This [bread] is no other than
Jesus’ flesh
This [horse’s open mouth] is
Vaisvanara
This [word] has
A magic power
This [fish head] brings
Courage & posterity
This [fluid] cures
All diseases
This [sequence of syllables] drives away
All evils & devils
This [ritual] ensures
Good weather & good harvest
This [hat/hood] guarantees
Purity, loyalty
This [flag] leads right
To paradise
This [man] is Continue reading “2 Poems by Yuan Changming”
The Great Also,
the Forever Tree: and maybe it’s always
synesthesia, like, look how this word
FREE is green, like GREEN only
blown open by a wind first and
then a fire, not closed off
like the edge of a crayon where
someone (who?)
is tempted to think color just stops, boxed
into its predictable shape
at the factory. You’re not
tempted, are you?
(On a lamp post in the middle of the bridge,
a piece of green tape, and hand penciled,
“the factory is out of control”) Yes,
I’m tempted, always tempted to believe
edges like that must
enclose and exclude. For
example, you’re out there, invisible, and I’m
in here, writing this.
But the Great Also, in the details
where everything numbingly the same
is stunningly various, and vice versa, secretly
runs the out-of-control factory. Yes? Continue reading “The Forever Tree by Kyla Houbolt”
Considerations for Maze-Building/Determining an Appropriate Level of Guilt Upon Leaving Someone I Do Not Love
1) The intention of the maze is to disrupt
the intuition of the traveller as frequently
as possible // how often did they hand me the map?
Was I asked politely to navigate? Told?
Permitted? 2) At a fork where within sight
one path branches again and the other does not,
the traveller will assume the branched path is correct.
How convincing the wrong turns should be made Continue reading “3 Poems by Anna Kahn”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome DHIYANAH HASSAN as our DECEMBER 2019 guest editor! As of today DHIYANAH will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of DECEMBER.
Submissions are open from today – 1st DECEMBER and will remain open until 24TH DECEMBER.
DHIYANAH‘S theme/s for the month are as follows
LABYRINTH
Continue reading “DECEMBER 2019 Guest Editor Is DHIYANAH HASSAN!!! THEME: LABYRINTH”
NO MACHINE WITHOUT A GHOST EDITION NOVEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY MAUVE PERLE TAHAT/ARTWORK BY MORIAH M. MYLOD
Continue reading “NO MACHINE WITHOUT A GHOST EDITION NOVEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY MAUVE PERLE TAHAT/ARTWORK BY MORIAH M. MYLOD”
Continue reading “BILL MORAN AND WILLIAM BRIAN SAIN PERFORM FOR SPEECH THERAPY NOTTINGHAM 27/11/2019 HOSTED/FILMED BY MIGGY ANGEL”Were incredibly blessed to welcome back the one and only Bill Moran to Speech Therapy after his legendary performance in 2017 – this time accompanied by the amazing William Brian Sain – two of the soundest souls in the whole of poetry – below is filmed footage of the full 30min headline set – a seance with the songs and sutures of soil and sinue – Massive thanks to all who braved the cold and stayed to the end to have heart-stones warmed by the powerful words. Enjoy xX
Joseph Ellison Brockway is a poet, translator, and Spanish professor. He likes to juxtapose words and signs to disrupt the language on the page and to disturb the reader’s thoughts. Many of his poems also experiment with ideas and images that explore the human psyche and existence. Joseph’s poetry has recently been published in L’Éphémère Review, Moonchild Magazine, SurVision Magazine, and Surreal Poetics. He can be found roaming the socialmediaverse at @JosephEBrockway.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 