Appreciate your marks of age
Light a candle for every new blemish mark or scar
Like a ring on a tree trunk it is a sign of defiance shown on your glorious trunk
Celebrate each mistake you make by wearing your favourite colour head to toe for the entire day
Know that you won’t do it again, or if you do you will be reassured that you won’t shatter next time you will still be you
On Blood
The blood I scrub from the inside of my underwear is not the same as the blood I wipe from my mouth, not the same blood my mother lost when laboring over my birth, not what spilled from my grandmother’s head when her stepfather split it open for scrubbing a floor wrong. Not the same, but close.
Continue reading “On Blood by Kaylie Padgett”
This is not a violin, it is a doorway. I know this, because I read a lot. My notes and references are usually very detailed breadcrumb paths. But, as Brion Gysin said, the mice can get into the larder of language (and I add to his point, memory). And, well… I have no control over legions of mice.
“This is is not a violin, it is a doorway.”
Continue reading “ReVerse Butcher: This is not a violin, it is a doorway”
Tachypsychia. The word we use for defining the neurological condition which alters our perception of time. Time lengthening, time moving slower, time contracting. A blurred vision of time as response to a traumatic event. Time as a collection of unrelated passages. Time as red lines on the temptation to exist. Time as well-captured intentions, the same throughout all journeys. Every inked reflection, a paradise lost. Continue reading “Christina Tudor-Sideri: PASSING THROUGH THE HOME OF THE DYING”
As guest-editor this month, I was fortunate to have published a small selection of stunning, future-facing poems from Astropolis (Haverthorn Press, 2018) by Astra Papachristodoulou earlier this month. I also asked Astra if she would write a small piece on Astropolis, which she has kindly done.
The methodology of Astropolis Continue reading “Astra Papachristodoulou: The methodology of Astropolis”
The final nine miles into Aberystwyth were a soothing amble through dappled green light – the disused railway track partially shaded by the overhanging branches of limes and oaks, the gravelly river close enough to be an audible murmur through the trees. Continue reading “The Green, Green Grass of Ceredigion by Laurence Mitchell”
Grief is a private island. You can only wave to people from it. Even people who have lived on that island, who may understand where you are, can only wave back. And yet the island is invisible so unless someone knows you are on it, they talk to you as if life is normal, and sometimes you don’t have the energy to explain or try to that you can’t understand a damn word they are saying because of all the water and wind between you and them.
A very few can whisper from some place different and make you feel temporarily less lonely because they have had a similar enough experience and an ability to empathize in a certain way, but in the end, it’s you and your island. And there’s no shorting the loneliness and sheer pain of grief.
Continue reading “Grief is a private island by Julia Lee Barclay-Morton”
Despite the distance we crash into each other repeatedly.
We spend a lot of our time typing messages. Talking over poor quality internet calls, across time zones that leave me exhausted, both of us wanting. A yearning that brings us closer but at a cost. Long nights of feeling alone while being together.
We hit and smash and spin out of control; never enough days and nights to find the balance that is there, tantalizingly out of reach, never out of sight. The wheels run straight for a while, but veer. We make it to the swamp. Though not the cemetery or the convent. Not this time. What we want is to run away into the woods. Continue reading “Spanish Moss by Eric Edwards”
Some years ago I wrote a draft on my left arm. An inarticulate tale. Scarry. A slasher script. Part-listless, part-restless. Preverbal. The script looked—and still looks—like tally marks. The kind of marks used to count ever since upper-paleolithic days. Tally marks to count days, for example. The days of a sentence.
Have you ever thought of your body as a prison cell? [Y/N] Continue reading “Some Body by Florence Lenaers”
My mother tells me I need a haircut because even she understands that, in this day and age, she can no longer instruct me kindly how many rolls from my stomach I have to lose before I am finally pretty. Continue reading “Spectator Sport by Marta Zawieja”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome Lara Alonso Corona as our sixth guest editor! Lara will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of July.
Submissions for Lara are open from today – 1st July and will remain open until 24th July.
Lara’s Theme/s for the month are as follows
Burning House Press are excited to welcome KARISSA LANG as our fourth guest editor! Karissa will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of May – when she will then hand over the reins to our fifth guest editor for the month of June.
Submissions for Karissa are open from today – 1st May and will remain open until 24th May.
Karissa’s Theme/s for the month are as follows
Identity:
Crisis • Creation • Multiplicity • Singularity
Continue reading “MAY’S GUEST EDITOR FOR BHP ONLINE IS KARISSA LANG!!!!”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome C.C. O’HANLON as our third guest editor! C.C. will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of April – when he will then hand over the reins to our fourth guest editor for the month of May.
Submissions for C.C. are open from today – 1st April and will remain open until 23rd April.
C.C. will be responding and publishing your submissions on a rolling basis during the month of April – and has chosen his themes for submissions!
C.C.’s Themes are
Place: Movement, Escape, Exploration, Architecture.
C.C. has introduced the themes himself for your guidance:
“The act of journeying contributes to a sense of physical and mental well-being, while the monotony of prolonged settlement or regular work weaves patterns in the brain that engender fatigue and a sense of personal inadequacy…”
– Bruce Chatwin, from Nomad Invasions
Overall, I’m not looking to reassure, but rather, to some extent, to unsettle.
For submissions, C.C. is looking for your poetry, short stories, flash fiction, prose poems, art, collage, painting, photography – as well as non-fiction submissions: essays, reviews, commentary, features, interviews.
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: ARCHITECTURE/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.
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 from 1st March til 24th March – and will reopen again on 1st April for our third guest editor.
BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing C.C. O’HANLON – Friends, send him your best!
C.C. O’Hanlon is a relentless traveller, polymath and occasional diarist. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Ernest, Minor Literatures and The Learned Pig. It has also been included in several anthologies and ‘best of…’ collections. Born in Sydney, and raised nearly everywhere else, he has lived for the past five years in Berlin. He is now en route to somewhere else.
I have always had a fascination with transformation. With taking incongruent parts to make a whole. With cutting and stripping and building up from the bottom and the artist as self-portrait. I could easily be found in childhood obsessing over the arrangement of furniture and décor of my Laura Ashley doll house. Today this is a dining room with a red velvet tablecloth and a chandelier light that chimes a segment from the Four Seasons because my Polly Pocket is the queen and she’s having the tour group Bratz over for tea. Tomorrow it is a miniature of my family’s dining room with boxes and old paint chips and no tablecloth and striped walls that look like silk and show damage easily.
Most of my toys were dolls, the easiest to buy for a girl, the easiest to buy for a child who liked to imagine new worlds. I remember the Betty Spaghetti dolls with neon bodies and plastic hair whose arms and torsos and heads could pop out to be interchangeable. To be made anew. How many times did I snap and unshape the forms of girls to get the end result I wanted. How many times did I teach myself what is, is not always. I remember the What’s Her Face dolls with smooth, blank complexions I could stamp their expressions on. This one is surprised. This one is happy. This one has stars for eyes and an eye for a mouth. The stars were permanent marker, the eye easily removed. My mother did not buy me anymore of those dolls after that. She would tell me not to cut Barbie’s hair because it did not grow back; I could not understand her anger when I cut my own bangs with clunky construction paper scissors. I thought we both knew it would grow back. It must have been the shock, of my swift reveal from one face to another. She must not have recognized me. I was not allowed to cut my hair again. Continue reading “A Catalogue of Small Shatterings by Makensi Ceriani”
My younger brother just scheduled bariatric surgery.
They will reduce his stomach to the size of a banana.
He said he can’t go another decade being heavy.
He asked me to remember when our parents got divorced, when he was 10 and I was 15 and I said, “See ya later!” as he filled time and loneliness with dry cereal and Swiss cake rolls.
I tried to commiserate, even though I knew I risked insulting him, since his weight issues have always been much greater than mine — said we both snacked way too much, and paired it with convenience eating:
And award systems:
We fell into negative routines: Dad yelled at me, I yelled at my brother, and then we nursed our wounds together with salt, sweet, repeat. Continue reading “When Food Goes Bad by Kelly Froh”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome Amee Nassrene Broumand as our second guest editor! Amee will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of March – when she will then hand over the reins to our third guest editor for the month of April.
Submissions for Amee are open from today – 1st March and will remain open until 24th March.
Amee will be responding and publishing your submissions on a rolling basis during the month of March – and has chosen her themes for submissions!
Amee’s Themes are Masks // Transformations // Cosmos // Personal Myth.
Amee has introduced the themes herself for your guidance:
Wrestle with illusion, seek truth. See your various aspects as masks; consider their individual appearances & reflect upon why they’re shaped as they are. We all have masks; what are yours? Play with this idea, infuse it with mystery. Perhaps make yourself a new mask, one that taps into important yet hidden aspects of your life or mind. Create something that intrigues you, not as a product but as a catalyst for personal transformation. Make something magical; give yourself chills. Mark it with the fire that comes from grappling with your own consciousness. “We are made of star stuff.” –Carl Sagan. Create work inspired by astronomy or cosmology. Contemplate time & the universe & how it all began. Consider the origins of matter & your place in All This. Note the night sky, the turning earth, auroras, eclipses, & the solar system; contemplate nebulae where stars form over eons, contemplate supermassive black holes brooding like giant spiders in a great intergalactic web. Forge a connection to the vastness; create a personal myth that integrates your own mind / dreams / experiences / family / heritage / community / culture / local plants or animals or natural landmarks with the universe at large. Become a drop swimming in an ancient & sublime night. Astrophotography welcome!
GENERAL SUBMISSIONS: If you have work that doesn’t fall into any of these categories, submit it anyway! Hybrid, experimental, & highly imaginative work encouraged. My taste in all media is eclectic but tends towards the strange (in both subject & style). I love clarity, complexity, intelligence, genuineness, introspection, mystery, risk, & symbolism. If it’s too weird for the average literary journal, send it my way; if you walk to the beat of your own drum, I want to hear from you.
NOTE: I especially encourage submissions from women, POC, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community, the neurodiverse, and other traditionally marginalized groups.
* * *
For submissions, Amee is looking for your poetry, short stories, flash fiction, prose poems, art, collage, painting, photography – as well as non-fiction submissions: essays, reviews, commentary, features, interviews.
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: MASKS/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.
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 from 1st March til 24th March – and will reopen again on 1st April for our third guest editor.
BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Amee Nassrene Broumand– friends, send her your best!
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 