The dust on the road Rotting leaves on a cold autumn morning The faint scent of hasty intimacy hours earlier The dogs are nervous tonight There’s blood on the wind
Floodstained thaumaturge Pyrolatrous and atavistic Smudging our faces with ash from bridges burnt
I’m following a blood trail My ego has been freebleeding All over the place again
Shamanic nights under a bright full moon Snow in the deep forest Moose tracks in the frozen bog Hematite rocks the colour of red ochre Spells of protection in the night I met a strange god One that no man has ever named
. . .
Myrmalmens ballade [IV/24]
I found God at a gas station in Nissedal Now I’m siphoning gas here in Niflheim There’s a radio tower on the heath Amongst the cows with their GPS trackers
My mind is a swamp Where the air is thick with things That are out to drink my blood
I’ve got a new best friend The red forest ant, Formica rufa Is it all in my mind or are they all Moving with strange synchronicity
. . .
Purple Prozac [VIII-X/24]
Chafing on my chakras Inflammations in my legs Stains on my soul And I’m standing over here Trying to laugh it off Saying pretty please, Pleiades
With your New Moon Theory And my dharmatology Trying to figure out Where all these gulls go to die I’ve got a bad back From looking over my shoulder
The smell of rotten petunias In autumn grey streets I love your geometry Even when you taste like dead dreams
If love is solitude gone bad Then I’m sitting here fermenting With your pyrolatrous autumn colours Alight in the early evening sun
The man I’ve become has no reason To be ashamed of the boy I once was You laid me down among the lupines Placed a cigarette in my hand
Landscapes of IKEAs And your crepuscular smell I’m standing in the middle Of the wrong side of the road Trying to snap a picture For our interdimensional trophy room
Wake me if you wanna smash You said, fell asleep And ran a fever all night
. . .
Born and raised in northern Germany and emigrated to southern Norway in his late 20s to take care of his child, Alexis Karlsen‘s work spans three languages and reflects the life experience of a disillusioned underdog drifter. Alienation, death, restlessness, substance abuse, sexuality, and the unquenchable thirst for love are recurring motives in his writing. Karlsen’s background is in social ecology, and his German-language novel Am Ende des Fadens, which touches on themes of magical realism, is nearing completion after 13 years of work. He can be found on Mastodon: @brisling@merveilles.town.
Once you see past the cellophaned shop-window of tourism and into the infected stomach-wound of political history you begin a journey to the centre of dictatorship. And you’re likely to survive. Because in their eyes you are a mere fly on the wound, spinning on the spot, feeling sick and having to suck it all up. They might feel an occasional tick at the discomfort of you’re reporting all their business, but with a quick swat, the threat of being locked up, they will send you packing. Off you fly back to your country. You’ll soon be back again. You’ll come because the scent of such drama and the chance to ‘make a difference’ is so seductive.
You will climb into airplanes and out of airplanes, stand in queues at airports listening to psych rock on repeat to make it seem cool to be wearing a suit. You will walk into climates where heat makes a sudden pass at you. The hotels will have terraces descending to cake-crumb concrete, ornate cities choking politely below you. You will blag free afternoon tea in the hotel where Agatha Christie disappeared. You will do this for years and years. Buoyed on the beauty of this city, by the people from whom you learn the meaning of solidarity.
You might go to courthouses larger than a demigod. Where justice is not just blind, she’s in intensive care. Every now and then, to fool the concerned Specialists from overseas at the bedside of Democracy daughter of Anatolia, there is a blip on the heart monitor in the form of a ‘good’ decision from the Constitutional Court. Everyone from Europe nods and puts a tick on their clipboards, smiling at each other from behind the surgical masks.
The British and French have scalpels in their pockets, just in case they get another chance to make choice cuts. It’s all they can do not to dot lines on the flesh, “Je vous en prie, madame mais j’ai l’envie de vos cuisses remplis de l’huile noir dorée.” They want to take her back to last century. She is confused and they all think she’s easy. She has had a lot of lovers in the past. They think they can own her just like Croesus tried but those silly billies don’t even know her real identity.
While Consultants from the EU compile assessments on the health and usefulness of the patient, the rats go on eating the body from underneath the bed. Small regional judges rebel against the Supreme Court. The government opens cases against the Istanbul Bar. Everyone visiting agrees the patient looks passably robust if you just don’t get too close.
The brochure that prompted your journey to the centre of dictatorship will be social media posts showing Kurdish boys dead on barricades and their families looking out from front windows, prevented from collecting their corpses due to sniper fire from the Turkish state. Dogs devour sons’ bodies near the door. You’ll see four old people, wearing white and waving flags be gunned down as they sneak out with a stretcher. Neighbourhoods and a city flattened by airstrikes and tanks. Sur, Cizre and the walls of Diyarbakır. It was 2016, just nine long years ago.
You’ll stand up, then, in your kitchen and say, “Yes, I am ready. Show me the treatment of women, show me culture of queer, show me the mothers of the disappeared, show me cyanide gold mines and grandmothers’ resistance, show me trans women called Hande and show the teeth of the police and what they did to her, show me 5000 teenage girls on a Women’s March, kettled in the super highway street of Istiklal, show me that lady in her eighties who sat on a rock with a staff, soldiers in a row behind her, trying to take over the olive grove as she blasts, ‘The State? I am the state here!’’’ You’ll say, “Show me oppression, the politics, police brutality, show me torture, show me 64 guards kicking a dealer to death in the prison at Silivri.” You’ll notice there are less and less women, they’re vanishing at a rate of one to three per day.
There will be an old man to clean your shoes on the pavement before going into court, but because you speak the language and had a family here, you will really talk to him and he will cry tears down a maze of lines from cornflower blue irises, telling you, “Inflation means it’s twenty lira for a few tomatoes, we don’t eat meat and we can’t make a go of it”. You’ll agree it is a sin to take over the Central Bank and to let inflation run at 168%.
By now you will be an international advocate. You will monitor 200 trials, hoping it will all get better. But fascism doesn’t need much sleep. When it’s too late you’ll see that you were not creative enough. You weren’t armed to the porcelained teeth or in league with deep state. How can you succeed? You don’t belong to the right cult. The President will laugh you off: “These people, they come here, make up a few numbers and leave.” At one point you won’t want to believe there are 185 journalists in prison. But you know them, you have met them and hugged them.
In seven years you’ll be scared for twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes on the day you decide to stand up are like being in an iron maiden, seeing your essence squeezed out and poured into a glass phial. You hold it up to the light – it is the right colour. You hand yourself permission to resist. Go and find them. They will show you the meaning of solidarity. They really will. Your dear fierce legal colleague who sticks with you, no matter what. Court reporter girls who stand up to the judge and are the subject of court cases written in the purple official bruise of his ego. The woman with 185 court cases against her, who still sends salvos to officials. The lawyers, physicians. They’re resisting so hard, are we with them?
The first court case you monitor will be Zaman newspaper, the journalist, editor, author and unliked man Ahmet Altan. Why don’t you sit in the front row, a copy of the OSCE Trial Monitoring guidelines on your knee? That’s how you monitor a trial, you see? Are they abiding by procedure? How much spare paper do you have? The trial will begin and you’ll write it all down. Then comes an undercover cop. He’ll lean his whole upper body onto you, staring down at the pad on your lap to read what you’ve written, “Are you with Human Rights Watch?” You should go on to record the rest of the hearing in Welsh shorthand. Barmouth Welsh.
You’ll fly over Mount Ararat, fancy that, with a lawyer called ‘the arrow’. Your combined presence, the lawyer’s arguments will get Berzan out on bail that day. You can change things if you put your energy right into the room. In these times of outsourcing intelligence, of never meeting, of cost-saving, if we stop meeting face to face, stop putting our physical, personal energy in the place where it is needed, where it will be seen and counted, then we will fall down either side of the abyss that is separating us, and will meet in a bloody mess at the bottom, wondering how it happened. The best advocacy strategy meetings will be twelve people around a table in Berlin, or in Brussels, or Istanbul, all equal in struggle and all winning. Slowly some of the elitist ones will unpick themselves like the decoration on a shawl, unwind and leave others in the cold. You’ll work on. Your reports will change the law.
How much is the ticket, you ask. Is it a time machine that will eat tokens made of years, of intimacy, friendships, of all else that exists outside the job? Will it be fuelled by all the poems you wrote and never published? You might only take one day off in seven months in lockdown. What else was there to do but work? When you see how bad it is every moment feels like the threshold of a potential win, of standing with them. And every time you think you’ve made a difference, the state will impress you with their newly proposed law to ban all mention of homosexuality on the internet; their throttling of the airwaves. One small squeeze is all you need once you’ve mastered and collected the horse of freedom, put in the brutal bit of police violence backed up by millions of canisters of poison gas at protests.
You will continue on this journey until the road kinks back and kicks you off the path. You will cling on by your fingernails, while life floats far away. You will stay on the road until a new boss steers the car into the back of a truck marked ‘Investment Bank’ and steals your integrity. Then you will lie about your reasons, out of politeness, and you will leave. You might believe that you can still go on, and that the road will welcome you back, but the road knows you can leave no more tread. That you belong in a field, walking over a bog with a small dog, looking up at the range near where you were born, thinking about sixth century poets, because the remaining road travellers, those local dissenters and human rights defenders, they will go on along the road, two thousand miles away. The fight was always theirs, and they will win. It was never about you.
. . .
Line Stockford is a Welsh poet, editor and translator of Turkish literature. An adviser on Turkey for PEN, she designed and ran human rights projects around linguistic rights and media freedom. She studied the History of Turkish at SOAS, London. Her book-length translations are published by Parthian, Palewell Press and Smokestack Books.
Cutting locust tree saplings to feed to the sheep who blatt impatiently. A locust grove has started and it must be stopped. Locust has thorns and is good for little except feeding goats and sheep. Although I’m sure the land has a different opinion. But the land does not have a vote, so cut the saplings will be.
The cost of the coast is the loss of honest sand, which was host to myriad lives we’ve failed to understand. Now there are daily sweeps of machines to scrape the bought sand smooth. You may find old cups or leftover snack bags there, because shells are crushed by the beach sweeper and these shells all came, once, from another beach from whence this sand was harvested.
Let’s go to the beach. Look. Here there are thorns and thistles. All the things to hurt your tender feet. Thistles wave their brave purple flags above their fierce foliage but it does them no good, cut they will be. Wear your rose gauntlets when you go into that field, and boots. The beach is friendlier, having been made so by voted decree. The sand is very hot, however, as no vote has learned to cool it. No vote could, though some still believe.
Slip into the water, still a bit cool. Out there are creatures who would like your friendship, and others who care for nothing but their next meal. Sometimes they are the same. We might recognize ourselves there too in the water when it’s calm. We’ve not yet drowned nor learned to breathe in the deep. What do we need to learn? I often wonder, or if it is possible at all, to learn, to breathe.
. . .
Kyla Houbolt is a poet and gardener living in North Carolina. Her first full length poetry collection, Becoming Altar, from Subpress.
Through a grimy window open fields small houses by tracks people standing or sitting in doorways watching the train
. . .
6.30 p.m. muezzin’s call to prayer
. . .
The battered, rusted pans the workmen use are as beautiful as things in a museum.
. . .
names of butterflies Sahyadri Birdwing Sahyadri Grass Yellow Sahyadri Rosy Oak Blue Malabar Banded Swallowtail
. . .
Nightfall. A lamp, its shadows
All morning, rain. Thousands of cicadas sing at once. I sit by the window and sip coffee, watching rain pour from the eaves. I’ve lost touch with old friends. Lizard droppings lie scattered on the window sill.
. . .
I’m not useful like a carpenter or plumber. I sit alone on veranda steps, gaze at the evening sky. Neighbors are quiet; the road to the village is empty. The moon set an hour ago.
. . .
Shadows blur on whitewashed walls. Serrated, spinning: leaf midair. Sensitive cells know day from night. Chitin, bone, shell.
A street barber squats on the pavement. Mirror, comb, scissors, razor, soap neatly arranged on a threadbare blanket. Coins fall like stars.
. . .
moth shadow, web let the mind rest
. . .
I’m a stranger, outcaste passing through
. . .
A dog limps past, vagabond. Whisper of river grass.
Drums reverberate. An oil lamp gleams. Heat. Sweat. Gods and heroes dance through the night.
. . .
The rain doesn’t end. Fungus eats our nails, books grow white mold. Pillows and sheets smell of mildew. The whitewashed walls turn green. A huntsman spider clings to a corner of the ceiling all day. There’s no daylight. The rain doesn’t end.
. . .
Fog at dawn. The smell of cook fires, feces, wet earth. The sky stays dark. My heart: a withered seed.
. . .
Last night I dreamed I was walking by the sea and came upon a group of thatched huts. I asked an old man, “What place is this?” “Nelcynda” he said.
. . .
I light a citronella stick. Bullfrogs roar in the flooded paddy field. Already the road is quiet. My lamp flickers and then goes out.
. . .
Kim Dorman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised in Oklahoma and Texas. He has worked and traveled in North America, from Mexico to Alaska, and spent time in France, India, and Sri Lanka. His books of poetry include Owner (Longhouse, 2016) and Kerala Journal (Corbel Stone, 2021). He currently resides with his wife in Kerala, India.
as blue-antlered dawn falls vertiginous over mountains
ii.
deadfall, muskeg
flakes of mica
the cryptic living tinted with winter
(each nivean heart an individuated star)
high bright tooth of winter moon
hill-spines arc – every vertebra a birch
iii.
the lake rim glows but its eye is dark
clouds and rain dissolve there
(and shores and rock)
within catacombs of willow
a bobcat ruby-throated attends to its altar of rabbit
and the forest, dimming
snaps shut its anthracite wings
iv.
the river is coal-blue sap
deadfall tamarack
there are flickerings at the edge of my vision –
movements through the long-bodied pines
(wolves are stirring, elk are stirring in the cold embers of this forest)
and water is a dark bloom, is never still
hylae swell
bones blacken
v.
between blue-skinned spruce and a fire calving light and heat
at an altar of water where all are subsumed or broken
darkness is drawing everything open – a long-stemmed and leaning dark
within which I may be scented or seen
and so I try to be silent
to intuit each movement within this catacomb of branches
to not give myself away
vi.
in a place wholly inaccessible I arrive to sticks and cold rain
beside white birch at the edge of a silent lake I rest and wait
for the one voice of night to share with me its oldest name
. . .
Autumn Richardson is a poet, editor and translator. She has authored 5 collections including Heart of Winter, An Almost-Gone Radiance and Ajar To The Night. Since 2009 she has been co-director of the multi-media publishing house Corbel Stone Press alongside British artist Richard Skelton. Between 2013 and 2022 she co-edited the influential journal of ecopoetics and esoteric literature, Reliquiae. Originally from Canada, she now lives on the west coast of Ireland.
Modern life is increasingly connected: central heating to phone, fridge to supermarket, watch to heartbeat. Without touching a button we can chat with friends in Australia, while eating strawberries at Christmas.
Yet beyond this glimmering convenience looms a shadow-side. For modern life in Britain grows ever more disconnected. Food comes from a shelf, water from a tap, and community from an app. As for travel, it occurs at unfathomable speeds, as we rush along tarmac strips, strapped into metal boxes watching screens, following other cars and road-signs, turning when the sat-nav says so. Where travel once generated constant discovery via deep interaction with places and people, modern journeys have become a dream of pure destination, an increasingly impatient thrust toward instant arrival.
Travel by car (or train/plane) performs a conjurer’s sleight-of-landscape, a folding of the map, to magically shift us over vast landscapes without ever experiencing them. This is journey-making with minimal connection. Temperature is thermostatically controlled, sound is piped entertainment, hills are reduced to a slight extra weight in the heel, and rivers to the bump of a bridge under tyres. Between start and finish, everywhere becomes similar grey roads.
All of which causes separation, isolation and disempowerment. With our hyper-reality and digital lifestyles, we have forgotten how to look in our neighbour’s eyes and see how well they are. The smog of mortgages and motorways, and the ever-increasing pace and price of work/life, leaves little time to simply connect with the land, with ourselves and each other. Traditional guides fail us, religions plagued by scandal, and science proclaiming that spirit doesn’t even exist. In this modern landscape, it isn’t easy to break through to the Light. The Way Forward
But there is good news. An ancient spiritual technology has been rediscovered, offering direct engagement with Source. You don’t need to dress smartly, sit still, feel guilty or get bored. No gurus are required, no intercessors or priestly authorities. It is a natural form of whole-body movement, a deep dance through imaginary labyrinths, and a hearty adventure.
Folk call it pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage is the ritual short-form of your life’s journey from birth to death. The aim is that by walking a short way correctly, you can put right your longer journey.
The basic technique of pilgrimage is to set an intention for wholeness, choose a holy place destination, and connect the two by walking. It is as simple, and infinitely complex, as that.
Walking is the oldest, slowest and deepest way to move across the earth. Intention is your motivation, the inner hope for healing that pushes you to make pilgrimage. And a holy place is somewhere in the world you feel can offer the wholeness you need, whether spiritual, mental or physical.
Finding your intention is the first step of pilgrimage. What lack needs filling, what question needs answering? Bringing this into consciousness – as words that can be repeated like a mantra – is a vital cog in the technology of turning a vague walk into a pilgrimage. If you don’t know which port you are sailing to, no wind is favourable (Seneca).
Next comes your choice of destination, a holy place that will harmonise in some way with your intention. You might choose somewhere intensely personal, the burial place of an ancestor or the site of a childhood memory. Or you may prefer to seek somewhere more universally well-known. Certain locations in this land have held the dreams of hundreds of generations of seekers, and in such holy places, deep echoes linger from those whose journeys went before.
You may find this word ‘holy’ troublesome, as if signalling pious spiritual exclusivity. But ‘holy’ doesn’t necessarily mean religious at all (though it can if you want). At root, the word derives from the Old English Halig, meaning wholesome and complete. The Scots word hale (as in ‘hale and hearty’) is its nearest living descendent. The same root word gave us ‘healthy’, ‘holistic’ & ‘healing’.
‘Holy’ is a very distinct word from ‘sacred’, though the two are often used interchangeably. Sacred derives from the Latin sacre, meaning set-apart, distant, unobtainable. ‘Sacred’ is like a distant star, beautiful but untouchable, while ‘holy’ is like a jug of water for the thirsty, something vital to integrate into the depth of your being.
Ultimately, what makes a destination holy is you, your need and the journey you offer. Wholeness (holiness) doesn’t sit around throbbing. It is activated by relationship. The healing magic needs you to need it. And there is no better way to activate this holiness than to take the time and energy to slowly walk toward it. The unreasonable dedication of an intentional journey on foot is a powerfully sincere sacrifice of time, energy and focus – making pilgrimage an effective key to unlock holy places in the land, body, mind and heart.
Deep Moving Roots
Bipedalism – walking on two feet – is our species’ original advantage, the biological life-hack that cast us as the upright strollers of the monkey family. Once we sourced this tech’ of walking, for two million years our ancestors were nomadic, roaming the planet in reverent pursuit of the herds and seasons. Constant movement shaped our evolution, creating the bodies and minds we have inherited today. Our species is homo perigrinus, and who we are grew from life on the path, our oldest home.
Yet a mere twelve thousand years ago, humanity ceased her restless roaming to begin cultivating agriculture and raising static dwellings. Arguably this was a bad move, leading to general imbalance.
Pilgrimage as an activity distinct from normal life arose in response. By providing a ritual reconnection with our ancient wandering freedom, pilgrimage helped keep alive the ancestral strength, beauty and wisdom of humanity’s nomadic inheritance.
Once you start seeing it, pilgrimage appears as one of our species’ great common forces. Wherever a stone has been raised, a temple built, or a spring recognised, so people have come (usually on foot) from near and far, bringing their hopes, dreams, offerings, prayers and songs. If you squint your eyes a bit, even our modern everyday journeys to the shops, to school or work, appear as (debased and frustrated) forms of pilgrimage.
The pilgrimage instinct is as fundamental a law of the human soul as gravity to our atomic reality. It doesn’t matter what faith (or lack) you follow, nor whether you believe in gravity or not. The apple always falls, and pilgrims always come.
But the path has not always been smooth, and pilgrimage has waxed and waned in these lands, attacked by the sharp hopes of kings and industrialists. While I was growing up, the peregrine precedent was almost invisible. Wanderers rarely passed my window. The Romany seemed settled, druids drove vans and troubadours endured mortgages. To be a tramp seemed to require alcoholism.
Yet today we witness the return of honest wandering society, as pilgrimage revives into a living British tradition, like Arthur awakening from his hill of slumber. Our hour of need has come.
Annoying the King
Those who decide the rules in society enjoy imposing their will upon us, because there is advantage to be gained in so doing, and because they can. Pilgrimage offers a shortcut to evade these heavy games of control. By taking the path, you can restore your ancient state of animal liberty, becoming wholly in charge of your time and passage through life, if only for a short-ish while.
Two hundred years ago, to be a British pilgrim you would have been sent to the workhouse or charged with vagrancy. Three hundred years ago, you could be transported to a penal colony or hanged. But today, pilgrimage is free for the dream.
You may feel you have little choice in life, pushed along by the normal forces of work, family and friends. But pilgrimage provides an opportunity – and challenge – to reclaim your personal autonomy, to plant a staff in the river and stride upstream.
For many people, there is a guilt response to this idea. The wonderful inefficiency of pilgrimage makes its time-demands look like gluttony. How can you possibly take two weeks to walk somewhere you could drive in two hours?
Such are the harsh internal shackles of convenience that govern the modern mind. For the responding question must surely be: to whom does your time on earth ultimately belong? Dare you stake one small portion for yourself? Can you really afford not to?
This is difficult to answer from the sofa. No matter what I write, you won’t really know until you step out, staff in hand and home on your back. Not even the ultra-rich truly own their time. But between the roads, the pilgrim inherits the earth.
As medieval scholar J. J. Jusserand said, pilgrimage has always had the power to “annoy the King”. And in our modern age, under the ever-watching eyes of state, corporate and digital kings aplenty, the freedom of pilgrimage shines brighter than ever.
“Liberty calls aloud, ye who would hear her voice…” (from a confiscated broadsheet, 1793)
I hope to see you on the path. Bring a song. It is not getting dark.
Walk well!
. . .
(The above is an extract from William Parsons’ forthcoming book, The S.O.N.G. of Pilgrimage.)
. . .
William Parsons has worked in British Pilgrimage since 2004. He spent his twenties as a wandering minstrel, in his thirties he founded the British Pilgrimage Trust, and in his forties he returned to freelance pilgrimage with a focus on writing. His work has reached most UK newspapers, TV channels and radio stations. He even got pilgrimage into Vogue. William lives in Glastonbury where he guerrilla plants Holy Thorns.
There is a moment in the film version of Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water when the main character, Graham, gets off the MacBraynes’ bus and for the first time looks across the Firth of Lorne towards Mull in the distance.
Ben Buie, Sgùrr Dearg, Dùn da Ghaoithe are all there in front of him, each a distant grace note to something that isn’t there anymore. Of course the movie takes vast liberties with both the book and indeed the story of Gavin Maxwell himself but somehow for me, with that scene, it all gets forgotten.
And so I watch the grass as it gets moved by the wind
and the sound of it
And I think of us there in Fishnish all those years later
The sweetness of that sound on Aird a’Mhorain.
Traigh Iar
and I think of those landscapes now that we’re not there,
the spaces where we used to be.
Your presence as it shifts into abstraction
and distant thought now
the space between you and me and the lines that I draw.
. . .
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Brian McHenry is an artist and illustrator whose work has appeared in various publications — including The New Yorker — and featured on record covers, books, and even the odd beer can. He currently lives on the north-east coast of Ireland with his two children. His recent combines elements of portraiture, symbolism, and abstraction to explore the physical and emotional landscape of remembering.
Midway through the event, a woman seated in the front row of the audience asked the panel of four authors, all of whom had made an appearance for the purpose of promoting their recently published travelogues, if they could explain in simple terms how their notion of travel differed from what most ordinary folk called holidays. Nothing is more difficult than to be simple, but the elitist charge implicit in her question, one that was somehow rendered more pointed by her affected pleasantness, laid another layer of complexity. The moment demanded deflection by way of a pithy response — l’espirit de l’escalier might have suggested a poignant quote from Ibn Battuta or something whimsical from Rabelais. Instead the panel, with a tad too much haste, dug themselves into a defensive trench, and in the process shovelled dirt on what they ill-advisedly and repeatedly referred to as common tourism. And they wouldn’t stop digging.
Conversations erupted throughout the room but eventually settled into silence, and no indication was given that the audience would assist her in pushing the panel off its platform, if indeed that was her intention. That being said, it most likely nudged it a little; peering through the newly created cracks in the edifice, the panel’s itinerant forays and desultory wanderings would have appeared to some people as lofty peregrinations wrapped in pompous superiority…or thoughts to that effect. Their somewhat clumsy efforts to enumerate the differences between what they get up to and what everyone else does would not have helped in that determination. On the other hand, some would have interpreted her question as self-aggrandising, one motivated by conceit, point-scoring and the desire for audience adulation. Either way, the nourishing conversations that were until that moment shared between the panel of authors and what felt like a roomful of friends, now a breathing mass of strangers, failed to revive.
Possessing an air of originality, mystery and spirited adventure, the mention of travel arouses more curiosity than that of the humble holiday, and there can be little doubt that by describing oneself as a travel writer rather than a holiday writer one gathers greater cachet. Yet it often seems that, at core, there is no difference between them. Indeed, the travel writers sharing the podium might easily have described their journeys as holidays. After all, three were promoting books about relatively short stays in what many would deem holiday destinations, including a fortnight in Paris, three weeks in a wine-growing region of France, and a month in Tuscany. Only one took a longer and more varied route, that resulting from an unplanned year of backpacking.
Putting it this way perhaps challenges their street cred, yet many philosophers, among them Seneca and Thoreau, were greatly inspired by the odd holiday, during which they created notable works of reflection on nature, on the human condition, and on life’s meaning or purpose. The same is true of literature. Agatha Christie developed the idea for a well-known detective mystery whilst on a leisure cruise down the Nile. Virginia Woolf wrote To the Lighthouse whilst on vacation on the Isle of Skye, and Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April was inspired by a month-long holiday to the Italian Riviera. The list goes on. In the end what matters most are the stories, and to this one might add a degree of self-discovery.
. . .
Old Cathy used to come into our house to wash her money. Though she scrubbed the stairs of every last one of them, and had done so for years, ours was the only flat in a long street of tall black-sooted tenements where she could come and go as she pleased. She even had a key. Some people would rinse out and refill her bucket, but she would have to remain at the doorstep, door closed. To be fair, Old Cathy wasn’t one for conversation, and in fact blanked most people, but that wasn’t the only reason people covered their doors. For much of her life she lived between the mental asylum, as it was then known, and the street, and when that information got around the neighbourhood by the usual whispering campaign people kept a watchful eye. During the time our family knew Old Cathy she had secured permanent residency in a Salvation Army hostel not far from where we lived: a small room with an iron-framed bed, a chair, a cabinet, and a cross on an otherwise bare white wall. Visitors were not allowed, but we visited anyway, my sister and me, and whilst some residents occasionally looked at us with suspicion, neither the warden nor anyone else ever refused entry.
My sister always firmly insisted that if anyone were to question us I should stay silent and let her do the talking. When neighbours or anyone else asked questions she generally cut in to finish my sentences in ways I could never anticipate. Three years my senior but in reality much older, I guess my sister would have been around eleven or twelve when we visited Old Cathy. She doted on us, and was always steady and sunny, but I doubt if many people saw that side. She just kept her head down as she scrubbed the stairs, her metal bucket echoing in the close as it clanked down each step, then reached back up to draw intricate floral patterns with white chalk on the margins of every step. This was a common custom in our neighbourhood, an area that outsiders called slums, but unlike Old Cathy most women just chalked a quick zig-zag or squiggle. Either way they only lasted a day at best.
A woman notorious for malicious gossip once stopped us to ask if our dad knew that our mother allowed a pauper lunatic to wander in and out of our house when he was at work (he worked almost all the time). We of course knew who she meant, but as instructed I buttoned up. I would have liked to have said that we loved Old Cathy, who was one of the kindest people on Earth, and that not only did she visit us, we visited her; but as my sister later reminded me she would most likely have called the police and had her thrown out of her residence and into the street. Adults were a different breed, and I dreaded the thought of mingling with them. Even at the early stages of adulthood most people showed signs of becoming distinctly unpleasant. I think Old Cathy felt the same way.
This was a time when mothers who took to their bed for days or weeks or maybe even months were generally considered to be indolent rather than depressed, a time when postpartum depression was for the most part unknown, and a time when having a stillbirth — regardless of the sadness, guilt and anxiety that were at heart a cry for help — was hushed up as a shameful failure. Mrs Bogus, a pathologically nosey upstairs neighbour of ours — listening at the letterbox, she fell into our hall one time when my dad opened the door on his way to work — stopped me and my sister on the stair to ask if my mother was still lying in her bed. She called her a lazy article, jolting her miserable mongrel on a choke chain before briskly walking on. No one ever explained to me the meaning of article, but I got the gist. Just ignore her, my sister said, and don’t repeat what she said to anyone. I didn’t have to: everyone seemed to know that my mum had sunk under the covers and let the house go to hell. It even got around the school.
For the best part my sister looked after things at home, organising clothes, tidying up, making meals, but after a while things began to slip there too, and the mess just piled up. We made a space on the sofa between heaps of clothes and coat hangers and ate cereal from the box. On one occasion we heard our mum mumble to herself that she wanted to cut her throat, and I was told never to repeat that either, not to anyone, not even to dad — especially dad! She didn’t mean it, my sister insisted, but I couldn’t quite dismiss the possibility. For all their promises to the contrary, adults were notoriously unpredictable. My friend’s sister killed herself over a stupid fiancé, the mother of a boy at my school was murdered by his dad — just one punch, they said, whilst she was doing the ironing — someone sunk an axe into someone’s front door, another put a petrol bomb through a letterbox, men filled with rage and hearts of hate fought to the death outside pubs, and psychopathic razor gangs roamed the streets and alleyways. No adult could be trusted entirely.
We came home from school one day to find all the mirrors in the house had been smashed — why mirrors? — and immediately I wondered if my mum had taken a shard of glass to her throat. I envisaged it. My sister made me wait in the hall until she checked out the bedroom. Mum was sobbing under the blankets, but otherwise okay. Old Cathy was there, calm and calming, picking up the pieces. She would have known worse, and most likely understood the situation better than anyone. For several weeks no stairs were washed as Old Cathy stepped in as our femme de ménage, arriving before we went to school, and leaving in the evening. Between those hours she did the shopping, made breakfast and prepared dinner, looked after my mum, washed clothes, tidied the house, and even found time to play board games with us — she was a master at draughts. In time, when my mother got back into harness, Old Cathy got back down on her kneeling mat to scrub and chalk the tenement stair, the distinctive sound of her metal bucket once more echoing in the close as it clanked on each step. Thereafter she would rinse out her bucket, brushes and money in our small scullery whilst the kettle boiled before settling down to sit with my mum, gazing into the embers in silence.
. . .
For some people, travel writers are escape artists sharing their secrets on how to break loose from sameness. Others live to wander, to find stillness in motion, and perhaps by chance to find missing parts of the story that made them who they are. It was whilst perched on a doorstep under a hot sun in Tamil Nadu that Old Cathy, for the first time since childhood, wandered into my thoughts. I was watching a woman take great care to create a kolam at the entrance to her home, a decorative chalk circle with floral designs that is said to bring good luck and prosperity to the occupants. The drawings are walked on, scuffed and washed out every day, and whilst illustrations and meanings vary, each in their own way presage the transience of our existence and the impermanence of all things. The process was hypnotic. With eyes squeezed shut I remembered Old Cathy with head bowed drawing similar floral patterns with her piece of chalk on the steps to our door, and for a moment that door opened. The long journey to India had led me back to the start, and perhaps, after all, that was the point.
. . .
In addition to teaching psychology in universities, adult education and colleges across the UK, Paul Tritschler has managed organisations within the fields of brain injury, sensory impairment, mental health and community activism. He has written for a variety of magazines, including Aeon, Psychology Review, Bella Caledonia, Counterpunch and Open Democracy.
¿Y el fuego que no se ve? ¿Cómo registrarlo? ¿Y la llama que invisible cerca al cuerpo? ¿Y la hoguera incolora que arde en el cerebro? ¿Cómo dibujarlas, cómo explicarlas? El incendio ciego encerrado en cada gota de sangre, ¿con qué tinta, con qué pigmento se traslada al papel? ¿Cómo hacer visible el alcohol que quema su anillo fantasma en la retina? ¿Y el fuego innombrable que calcina la lengua? ¿Y el alambre ardiente y afilado de la circunferencia que te atraviesa el alma? ¿Cómo decirlos, cómo llamarlos?
And what of the unseen fire? How to record it? And the invisible flame about the body? And the colorless bonfire roaring in your brain? How to draw them, explain them? The blind blaze enclosed in each drop of blood, with which ink, with which pigment can it be put to paper? How to make visible the alcohol that burns its phantom ring on the retina? And the unnameable fire that scorches the tongue? The blistering, razor wire that encircles the soul? How to name them, how to call them?
. . .
El nombre es una espiral, un erizo que da la vuelta a la sombra. Adivinas luz al torcer el muro. Casi la tocas, pero no la alcanzas a ver. Arena blanca. Sigues. Recorres un segmento del círculo con una jaula de pájaros vacía en tus manos: la puertita choca su metal al abrirse y cerrarse a tu paso. El mar deja en libertad uno de sus vientos para que se pierda en el laberinto. Lo encontrarás llevando el rumor de campanas distantes y de piedras tristes y metales que brillan lejos. El palacio del caracol es su esqueleto. El palacio del estratega es su memoria. Hay un mar vivo en el centro. Al humedecerse, el cráneo del remolino canta su canción. Es lo que llega a tu oído.
The name is a spiral, a sea urchin turning round the shadow. You glimpse light when curving along the wall. You can almost touch it, but you can’t quite see it. White sand. You continue. You pace the segment of the circle with an empty birdcage in your hands: the tiny door clanks its metal open and shut with your footfalls. The sea sets free one of its winds to lose it inside the labyrinth. You’ll find it carrying the rumor of distant chimes and sad stones and metals that shine from afar. The seashell palace is its skeleton. The strategist’s palace is his memory. There’s a living sea at its center. When wet, the whirlpool’s skull sings its song. That’s what you hear.
. . .
A lo largo de la Odisea, hay una frase que deja un leve rastro en la historia de los días y las noches de Odiseo entre las islas: la luz del regreso. Telémaco la pronuncia por primera vez cuando le confiesa a la diosa Atenas, la ojizarca, el temor a que su padre hubiera perdido ese fulgor. Odiseo la emplea cuando trata de explicar a Calipso su deseo de volver a Ítaca. Hay esperanza en esta imagen, pero se trata de una esperanza humedecida de tristeza. La tristeza de la imposibilidad del retorno, la de la callada certidumbre de que la Ítaca de la cual partimos no la encontraremos ya. La Odisea, como todos sabemos, es la apuesta para recuperar la luz del origen, la primera que vieron nuestros ojos y por la que vale la pena morir para verla brillar una vez más. Todos tenemos una Ítaca que reverbera en el filo de nuestro horizonte. Así, el poema entero –es decir, la vida- se concentra en esa imagen, como la luz de la isla en el vaso que dibuja su reflejo en el muro.
Throughout the Odyssey, there’s a phrase that leaves the faintest of traces on the history of the days and nights of Odysseus among the islands: the light of the return. Telemachus first pronounces it when confessing to the goddess Athena, the bright-eyed one, his fear that his father may have lost that glow. Odysseus uses it when trying to explain to Calypso his desire to return to Ithaca. There’s hopefulness in that image, but it’s hope dampened by sadness. The sadness of the impossibility of return, that of the quiet certainty that the Ithaca we left won’t ever be found again. The Odyssey, as we know, is the attempt to recover the original light, the first our eyes ever saw and for which it would be worth dying to see shining once more. We all have an Ithaca reverberating on the edge of our horizon. Thus, the entire poem—that is to say, life—is concentrated in that image, like the light of the island in a glass that etches its reflection on the wall.
. . .
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, Gaspar Orozco has published 8 books of poetry, three of them translated in English by Mark Weiss. He has translated poetry from English, French and classic Chinese to Spanish. He was a member of an obscure punk band, Revolucion X; the Spanish label Metadona Records will release an album of their lost recordings in December 2025. He currently works as a diplomat.
There are people with real names and there are those who will never know such a thing. Those with real names have had them called out loud in the valley of their soul. Those people are not the property of weeping angels. I have an angel assigned solely to weep by me day and night. The river of an angels tears is a damned thing. A cursed dash of the darkest rapids. The creatures that swim there! Winged eels with electric teeth. Octopi in buttonhole suits. They see my faded scales. I sit by their mirror smoking. I am unafraid of damnation. Such a thing was foretold for me. There are those with addresses and amalgamations of numbers and streets they know for some time. I have never known anything for long. It isn’t my way. There are those who have something they may call home and it may be bad or it may be good but they are not tied to it by invisible ribbons or bows. They will have seen it. They will have slept in it. Their feet understand they must return their owner to there and so that is where they go. The bones of my feet ache. They resent shoes. They resent places. They want to return to the river. There are those that are vouched for by others who have known them since they were a drunken night, or since an uncle danced in a way that his not yet conceived a nephew would later copy his particular show of movement (or lack of) whichever it may be. There are those who are defended by mother to suspicious father. There are those who have people who know them. There are those who sit with those they know under to the glare of nurses inspection. When they stand before teachers and bus drivers and the tyranny of all other children there are those who are in some way vouched for and then there are those that are not. No concept of what it means to truly know their face in another eyes, or to actually have the right to even a few letters they should be recognised by. Or perhaps another human who knows them for more than a second or a day. Raised by people paid to keep them for a contracted time. There are those who feel death may be their only truthful companion. They have a longing to return at all times. Even when they do not know where that place might be exactly — that they could return to. So they do not! There are those who are considered suspicious by nearly all who encounter them on some deep and primal level. Like foundlings, or fairies, or any other being who arrives unknown — their presence can incite revulsion or cruelty or pity at best. If lucky their presence might even incite care. They are an open wound. Lacking the kind of a skin that can protect from bacteria. Devoid of layers. They pass without concealment. Those who will never have the right to a name! I am of those. Somehow always assumed to be guilty, unworthy, most certainly contagious. We must be contained. I gave you kindness, what did you take from me? That’s what they often say. It is not often kindness that they have given. The things they have done would render the river of the damned even more impenetrable than it already is. They will always deny it. What they did, they will always blame the one to whom it has been done to. Always! I never met one of them or they or those kinds who would not say I was a liar, they said it to themselves, they said it to everyone else but most hideously — they said it repeatedly for their entire lives to me — so here is my lie, you may read it as truth but it would not be, it would be more than truth, it would be certainty. To those who will also not-be-named I must point out — I did not believe them then and I do not now. I know words. I know terrors. I know monsters. The truth of irrevocable realities — do not belong to them: cannot be named by them: cannot be contained by them — truth is the most garish of foundlings, it is the eternal spirit companion of weeping angels. This is my imprint. It belongs to me.
. . .
Dr Jenni Fagan is an award-winning, critically acclaimed novelist, poet and artist.Published in global translations the author of four fiction novels, one non-fiction memoir, eight poetry collections, exhibitions, adaptations and with another two new fiction novels due out next year.She has won The Gordon Burn Prize 2025, was a Granta Best of British Novelist (a once in a decade accolade), Scottish Author of the Year and has been on lists from The Women’s Prize, BBC International Short Story Prize, The Sunday Times, Encore and more. Fagan has worked extensively with vulnerable groups including those in prison, and the care system where she herself grew up. Described as The Patron Saint of Literary Street Urchins, Fagan’s work responds to the centre always from the margins and without compromise.
Dancing on the Silk Razor was born out of a discussion I had with my friend Dan Wechsler. We were contemplating various writing work we’d done when younger, and he mentioned there was a first line for a story he’d always wanted to pursue but had never quite been able to. I asked what it was and he replied, “Somebody had been stealing Harold Solomon’s ideas.” I liked it immediately; it had the kind of lead in I relish, and although it wasn’t my normal way of working, I asked if he’d object if I tried running with it. He said to go for it. And like often happens with the right catalyst, a written story poured straight onto the page.
Although the writing took a prose form, from the start I had the notion of it also being a film. So, with extremely limited funds but some phenomenal, longstanding collaborators who were game, we shot the whole thing in four days on 35mm with about a 1.5. to 1 shooting ratio running around New York City. It was a great challenge and a great time.
The narration is really the main performance, and we wanted to find someone for it who could really elevate the film. We felt Wallace Shawn would be perfect, and as a writer might particularly appreciate the role. We sent him the piece and he liked it and agreed to do voice-over. But this was still the COVID era and regrettably I came down with a case right before the recording session. I directed via Zoom but it was excruciating not to be there in person. Fortunately, Wally completely got the tone and humor and, with the kind of thorough preparation every director hopes for, nailed it on the first take.
I’ve taken to calling this a multiform work, as I feel it can be equally a written piece and a film. And I’ve since been working on a series of new pieces in the same vein, with iterations that co-exist across mediums. All, however, begin in primary form as the written word.
. . .
Written, Directed and Edited by: D.W. Young Narrator: Wallace Shawn Harold Solomon: Dan Wechsler Producers:Judith Mizrachy, Dan Wechsler, D.W. Young Cinematographer: Arlene Muller Composer: David Ullmann
. . .
D.W. Young is a New York City-based filmmaker and writer. His two most recent feature films are the documentaries Uncropped (2024), about Village Voice photographer James Hamilton and the heyday of alternative print journalism, and The Booksellers (2020).
Watercress abundant, pooled, fed by a freshwater stream that leaks a channel, a winding furrow carving an arc across the sands. Joining the Atlantic salt waters. Diluted.
Conas ta tu a stor? How’re you love? Bhfuil tusa ann? Are you here? Where are you?
Under the rocks……..caught in the weed………….? A remnant of yourself…. a fragment, flotsam, tiny bones bleached out over time.
First child, the one and only first, spent in the sands and carried away unseen.
Pause, sigh, and breathe. Slow. Clearing. In and out breaths. Fuck it …
The stream’s absorbed when it reaches the sea. Red standing stones guard the shoreline. Dug in, bulk undiminished through the years. Smooth blank faces peppered with tiny lives. Living creatures in spiraling whorls, paint-box colours distinct from the rest with their blend of muddy greys, blacks and browns. The discreet, minding their own business ones.
Keeping to the low formation, leaning into these sentinels, pushing up hard. Limpets impress their determination into my back, encouraging them to leave their marks on my skin, through the layers of time and guilt. Tiny bruises, kissed into my shell.
Cá bhfuil tu mo stor, where are you my love? Still here? Shape shifting your small self, half formed baba deas, lovely baba? Or have you vanished into mists of salt water and weed? Níl fhios agam, I don’t know, may never know.
Sins for which I alone hold no charge, spoken in my head. Not then, had no clue back then.
Busy in the kiddish world of long summers, heat hazed early mornings blended into same grey days. School and holidays, home and here, the Red Strand. First beach out of Clonakilty, Cloich na Coillte, stone castle of the woods.
The brother, older but no wiser through the passage of summers, collects the tiny vivid shells under instruction from his know it all little sister. All through our early rising summers for as long as it pleases him. Mostly in the absence of anyone else. (He’d prefer the other boys, tardy, sleeping-in boys, almost always with a ball).
We sort the shells into currency for our long playing games, oblivious to any lives inside the whirly chambers. Red, yellow and green defining value, same as fruit pastilles or wine gums;sticky pleasures. Flavours imparted by the power of suggestion.
In truth they all tasted much the same, the richer the colour the more they’re desired, sweeties and shells. No truth to either.
He is obliging, patient and generous, prepared to share a vision of the day, playing shop? Or being rich for our new life ahead. Content til he gets a better offer……at least til then.
A big brother like no other, he is dark to my fair, tall where I am slight, brave while I am cautious. Protective and free running altogether in one certain self. His infectious self-belief sweeps us into his limitless foolhardy world and we’re away. Climbing rock faces, out of windows and trees, into danger without looking back. Running for miles with no sense of the dinner time clock. It chimes without our ears to mind it. Into trouble over and over he brought me, with no regrets.
Not true, baba deas. My one regret. The original sin.
Hours we spend under the towering protection of this headland. Obscured from view by the remains of an over-ground tunnel. Giant concrete slabs scattered about, fallen, impotent, discarded. Marooned in the sands.
A hidey hole, a place of travel from one gloomy tunnel end to the other, between the stream and the sea.
Fresh water and salt, fishing in both, crazy laughter and messing, all the way to tears and squabbles on rare days, high days and holidays, tense sort of days.
Status Quo, the quo, ruled the roost for his whole gang, while we, the girls, follow the Bay City Rollers. Uniform in our tartan trousers, Baby love, oh baby love, skimming our thighs cutting into our vain attempt to hold the boys attention. All the while loving our idols, the special one, he who holds our gaze on the telly. A band member for all the seasons of our pre-teen crushes.
Teenage years we return to the Red Strand with beer and tents. The sea is the place to be rather than the shore. Trailing friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, cousins once from overseas, to share the magic that no longer exists. Red Strand’s too full of childhood and original sin. Better beaches round the corner, further along the coast, closer to the shore life of pubs, craic and caravan parks.
All these places we never saw as children, never knew were there, so determined was this family not to mix with the noisy ones, the drunken ones. The families that might know us from life at home ones. The sleeping in, lying in their beds half the day ones.
Mothers and fathers equally corrupt longside their offspring, in the gospel of our English origins. They lined up daily at the chip van for their tea. We ate freshly caught mackerel with bread and butter, the food of the Gods, and so it was. Free, from the sea.
We ate mussels plucked from the rocks. Sometimes lobsters, captured in pots thrown off the shore. Squealing their way from blue black to bright scarlet in a pot alive with boiling water, delicious, with butter dripping from our chins, stinking of garlic. No one ate that stuff, famine food still reeking of the sea but we did. Set apart, positioned above, looking down, while trying to squeeze in.
We were blessed, apparently.
The beach welcomed us back annually, sharing its curves, a safe return into the familiar crook of embracing rocks. The concrete tunnel sheltering our comings and goings from year to year, constant, never-changing. The strand,, our part in it, had a rhythm, a ritual of its own making. It bent slightly each year as we grew up, new faces appeared, alongside the familiar caravans.
Softly whispered voices, rememberings from the sea, in the sand dunes, where courting couples played out their pleasure. Mostly undiscovered, known by all and avoided, quietly sidelined. Not allowed, and still they were always there. Bless me father for I have sinned. Curled up in warm grasses on heated sand that threatened collapse without the tough spines that held it altogether.
All through the early Summers a man ploughed his way, twice a day from the dizzy height of the headland, traveling from his smallholding, along a narrow sunken track. He trailed a donkey and a jennet down onto the strand, on a single rope. Their arrival a Mr Whippy of excitement in the day trippers, our prior knowledge fattening our superior position. Privileged with familiarity, without names, we are known to each other. The donkey man and us, the regulars.
Some days I follow them on their return pilgrimage through the steep channel, the sharp, dry grass nicking my bare shoulders, a minor penance, a small offering. I daydream a change of identity, assuming a place in their holy family on the homeward climb. Shifting from child to blessed mother, to partner and devoted animal whisperer. The donkey man never seems to notice my presence or acknowledge it at any rate.
Codladh samh, sleep safe, a stor, love, where ever you are, under the deep sand or washed clean among the creatures that flow back and forth, in and out of the tides. Three hail Marys and one our father the regular gift for telling lies. How could you not tell lies when caught between the father and the son. I have no idea, only one idea possesses my mind, escape and protection.
First love learned at the foot of the should be protector and corrupt for ever after while nuns whispering lies and responsibility into the shell like of every girl child and what would they know about it anyway? Brides of Christ, be lady-like, be Marylike the impossible mantra, the ideal that will never be matched.
They can’t control themselves, they confide, it’s up to ye to take control, female pleasure, unknown, unspoken.
Is it any wonder a stór beag, my small love, my tiny not fully hatched firstborn that you were conceived and lost on the shore of my innocence. Bless me father, I don’t fucking think so, thank you very much and goodnight.
Transformation, a daily event as the sea wipes out the story of the sand and shore. Washing and rinsing rocks and strand in a matter of hours, filling and emptying the pools closest to the rushing waters.
Anemones, the most tantalising transubstantiation of all. Still to this day, a miracle. Brown jelly mounds stranded in the air of low tide become flowering tendrils of soft pinks submerged in the salt water. Waving gently, they invite touch, dipping a finger into a shallow pool and softly, softly stroking the water closest to the fleshy petals. Too close, they fold themselves in, abruptly resuming their impenetrable personae. Still here, always here, since the beginning of time. Stuck fast to their ways.
Echoing through the years, on every return I pay homage to their beauty hidden in the dark brownness of the rock pools, discomfited in the air heavy world.
Tabhair aire, take care, precious one, watch out for the sidewards crabs lurking out of sight among the weed. Sharp little nipping pincers, painful beyond belief to the unwary, bi curamach, be careful, mind your little fingers and toes.
A fully grown woman this visit, kneeling in a hollow scraped out of the sand. Lost but keeping watch on the tide, inching closer and closer, washing clean its own. Soothing the grains with the patterns of waves, licking into the holes dug out with plastic reds and yellows. Further out to sea, waves churn up the red sandstone rocks lining the basin of the strand. Fractured thoughts coming and going rolling back and forth, testing the present with the past, seeking out long gone shapes amongst the weed, carried and tossed, lifted along the breadth of the curve.
Nothing clear, no single sound, a rag bag of rattling stones to hang from my feet. Uneasy flickerings in the corner of an eye. Glimpses of the jennet’s flashing whites and straining head. His unpredictable nature printed in my memory, a familiar refrain, a chord that echoes in my pulse. He was half donkey and half horse, we said, the mixture of breeding, his magic. Also his devilish power, tempting fate with its unnaturalness.
The water, freezing, has reached me, frothing at my knees and trickles begin to fill the spaces around and between my legs, my feet folded into the dugout. How long could I last? The cold drove me out half way between head and toes, intimate with my belly. Enough already. This time.
. . .
Inter-disciplinary artist Liz Cullinane is a storyteller in words and pictures. Her Belfast based practice is rooted in community activism, theatre design and film collaborations with poets and musicians. Liz’s academic research on early 20th century Irish women artists focusses on Mary Swanzy (1882-1978). Published by the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), she has innovated a digital opera on Swanzy. Recent exhibitions & writing reflect her engagement with the Achill Island landscape in Mayo.
Burning House Press are excited to welcome C.C. O’HANLON as the fifth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today C.C. will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of November.
Submissions are open from today 1st November – and will remain open until 25TH November.
C.C.’s theme for the month is as follows
—JOURNEYS
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JOURNEYS: Physical, Psychological, and Imaginary, embracing words and images, in all forms, as well as complexity, resisting the superficial, algorithmic narratives of social media.
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Photo by Given Rozell.
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A self-described ‘vagabond, diarist, and wreck’, C.C. O’Hanlon’s fragmentary memoirs have been published in various anthologies, including Best Australian Essays 2005 and Best Australian Stories 2004 (both published by Black Inc, Australia), A Revealed Life: Australian Writers And Their Journeys In Memoir (ABC Books, Australia), The Odysseum: Strange Journeys That Obliterated Convention (John Murray, U.K.), Zahir: Desire & Eclipse (Zeno Press, U.K.), and Dark Ocean (Dark Mountain Project, U.K.). A founding features editor of Harper’ Bazaar Australia in the late ’80s, his mainstream journalism and images have appeared in The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Variety, Travel & Leisure, the Australian editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and scores of other newspapers and magazines.
He now lives a nomadic life with his American wife of 38 years aboard a small, sea-worn old sailboat named Wrack in the southern Mediterranean. They have three adult children.
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Submission Guidelines
All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com
Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: JOURNEYS/POETRY
Poetry and Fiction
For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.
Art Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.
Virtual Reality/ 3D Artworks
For VR Submissions, please submit no more than three (3) individual artworks. For Tilt Brush works, please upload your artwork to Google Poly (https://poly.google.com/), and mark it as ‘public’ (‘remixable’ is at your own preference). A VR/3D artwork can also be submitted as a video export navigating through the artwork. If you prefer this method, please upload your finished video file to YouTube or Vimeo and provide a URL. With either format, please provide a 150 word artist’s statement.
Non-fiction Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.
Submissions are open until 25th November – and will reopen again on 1st DECEMBER 2025/for new theme/new editor/s.
BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing C.C. – friends, arsonistas, send our NOVEMBER 2025 guest editor your magic!
With subtleties broken, / discourses returned / much heavier / A fresh train of disquietudes / sighed often /Sparks of temper; / the puzzle and the plague / But, in full view, / all things in the world / answer consequently: / fallen, rescued / The deepest impression, / a fine truth to any purpose — / that odd legacy / of occasion
Teresa Mestizo is a Chicagoan Xicana currently based in a small mountainous town in Mexico where she writes, teaches, translates & makes art. These poems are part of her recent erasure series using Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767). More of her work can be found at teresamestizo.com
can the most mundane can it (not) shine in my eye?
a rock gets lost but ppl forget
then nothing much done today
sometimes sleep but sometimes not. washed away
an interesting turn of phrase
someone walks into a bar but someone someone tries to convince me of something but i’m conversing with a desk lamp
the problem w the world today:
the problem w the world today
Austin Miles is from southeast Ohio. He is the author of the chapbook Perfect Garbage Forever (Bottlecap Press) and has poems published in Touch the Donkey, Reap Thrill, Don’t Submit!, and elsewhere.
5. Dusk completes its sundowning as crowds of people begin to congregate. Dark tourism is streamed on the brick walls of the town square. From the sewers: the fatberg sits in silent judgment: Popcorn lungs blooming in the young. Distant bleeps and glitches. A Faraday box stuffed with emotions. New fiberoptics beneath the cobblestones. “10G bae bee! 10G!!” The pale green glow of a billion minds humming beneath these streets. “Shot up some estrogen and grabbed the mic. Never felt so free.” GhostBots™ linger on the edge of the crowds asking if we need resurrecting. We lie supplicate at the open pit. Body heat rises up. Visible by the light of our screens. Easter eggs in a snuff film. *cherry vape clouds* Generational grief pegged to a wildly fluctuating index. <current artery blockage at 65%> The attract screen welcomes us to join the deceased. We line the open mass grave with our phablets. We place them gently along the edge. Our banking details auto-scrolling. Endless digits glowing in the night.
6. Piles of burning mattresses. Labyrinthine tent cities tunnel deep in the night. Dynamos of madness. Blister packs of fear litter the sidewalk. People slicking their hair back looking to make a name for themselves. Mag-lev handcuffs are issued to citizens of good standing. Making arrests has become de rigueur. “Don’t get left behind – make yours today!” They say, ecoterrorism is back on the menu – whether we like it or not. Try decreasing memory footprint to speed things up. *panicked breathing, faces flush with relief* “It’s ok. It’s ok, guys! It’s all behind login.” Blood boys wandering aimlessly. Leashed to IVs. They skirt the vortex at the center of the town square. They gather in the murk. Peel like shadows off the brick walls. Supplicant and meek they are loaded into trucks. :the fatberg sweats in the dark: Bonfires burning large and bright on every street corner. Feverish dancing, arms flailing. Engagement rates are up! Distant bleeps and glitches. Drones pinging in the night. This is a place where no one wins. “Welcome to the unsubscribe center. You made it!”
7. Washing bones to arrive at their final incantation. Broken teeth litter the streets. Shattered bottles line the curbs. Burger boxes and Styrofoam clamshells shift and slide along the sidewalk. :the fatberg wheezes from the sewers: “Dark empaths on the prowl” Great is their grift and short is their thrift. The pavement is covered in feces. Broken tents sway in the wind. A yellow sulfurous pollen burns the nostrils. Blankets everything in its stench. Blister packs of disappointment clog the sewer drains. The dispossessed have set up shop at the local mall. All honeycombed out with anguish architecture. Occult practices sold here for a price. *whispering* i’m on the verge. Flickering at the edge of sense. Cut-tongue mumblecore. Agitated. Carbonated. Overstimulated. Wandering the halls looking to score code. Countless stalls in cramped space. Frenetic haggling. Stale sweat and burned pharmaceuticals. JUUL pods litter the tile floor. Stimming on glitterbombs. Tech spells and hexes coded in COBOL. Etsy witches paid in arcade tokens. “Hey there are gravity sinkholes everywhere here so – watch your step.”
Donna Enticknap works with alternative photographic processes to create portraits of place and self, exploring ideas of connection to time and landscape, and the fallibility of human memory. Bluesky: @auuop.bsky.social Website: https://www.donnaenticknap.com/
Brick Professional Building enislanded by offramps.
Asphalt Curbs Pushed onto the Mulch by the plow service spell something broken in the lot of the brick professional building.
Black Plastic Rat Traps every twenty paces under dead brown junipers ring the brick professional building.
Box for Patient Samples bolted to the masonry outside the back basement door of the brick professional building.
Five People in Cars Eating by Phonelight two of them wearing scrubs each of them alone behind the brick professional building.
Oft-Gnawed Fisher Price People collect pathogens in the children’s corner of the brick professional building.
* Inholding
Where feral bloodroot blooms prettily, where knotweed and bittersweet are bad ideas that have won the meadow where there are wells and springs and cairns and cellars there is a heavy chain and hook hanging from a maple too old to tap where her late husband butchered their cow.
Corwin Ericson is the author of Swell, a novel, and the collection Checked Out OK. His work has appeared in Volt, Jubilat, Harpers, and elsewhere.
(Image: Ralph Eugene Meatyard. “Untitled,” 1963. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery)
Damian Ward’s work explores the subtle interplay between nature, memory, & the enduring presence of the past. Through a monochromatic lens, he seeks to distill the landscape to its essential forms. Bluesky @damianward.bsky.social www.damianwardphotography.co.uk
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 