Search

BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Not For Profit/For Prophecy

Open Search
Tag

Fiction

Athanor by Jeff Jackson

Nico in Athanor (1972).

1972 film directed by Philippe Garrel. Cinematography by Michel Fournier. 

35mm, color, silent. 20 minutes.

“I put my life on that screen, but people thought that nothing happened. Everybody was too stupid to see what’s right in front of them.”  
– Nico 

ONE.
Nico is laid out on the stone floor of an ancient castle. Her striking profile is unmistakable. Her hair is dyed red, eyes shut, one hand rests atop her chest. The gray stones around her form the pattern of a circle. In the center, someone has ceremonially placed a log. This appears to be a ritual, but nothing indicates what kind. Nico’s body remains still. The scene is entirely silent. If this is a sacrifice, has it already happened? Here at the beginning of the film, there’s already a sense that we’ve arrived too late.

TWO.
Nico sits before a stone fireplace. Her naked back is to us, her long red hair cascading over her shoulders. The unseen fire outlines her body with a subtle  glow. Is she a prisoner in this castle? Forced to submit to sadistic situations? As if she’s registering our questions from the other side of the screen, Nico shifts her head, though she refuses to suggest any answers. Her full attention is focused on the bas-relief sculpture on the wall that depicts warriors in brutal battle, brandished swords and lances, shattered armor, severed heads. A history of violence chiseled and preserved in stone.

THREE.
Another wing of the castle. Nico sits on the stairs and peers up at the fire burning brightly in a stone urn. Her arms are crossed over her exposed chest, like she’s trying to stay warm. The light from the flames undulates along the wall, flickering across her face, framing a sallow and sickly expression. Now it seems clear that she’s not a simple captive of the castle. She haunts this place, or maybe better yet, she’s haunted by it. Though perhaps for Nico that distinction is meaningless. 

FOUR.
Adorned in a silver headpiece, Nico is positioned before a stone altar. A brown falcon stands atop it. She remains motionless, as if engaged in prayer. Only her bare back and shoulders are visible. When she looks down, it’s with a theatrical gesture of shame, like she has an unspeakable secret to protect. That hint is all she offers. On the altar, the falcon bristles its feathers and swivels its head toward us. Its fierce eyes shine. 

FIVE.
Nico sits in a large window frame that looks out upon dusky blue clouds and a purple horizon. She’s completely nude, her alabaster body turned away from us, round buttocks resting on the stone sill. She holds a glass ball, rotating it with great care, enraptured by the bits of light it refracts. She studies this transparent sphere as if it contains an entire world, one that pulls her deeper into its orbit with each rotation. She’s using it to cast a spell that she doesn’t fully comprehend, in thrall to her own powers, unconcerned about their cost. 

SIX.
Nico looks down into a mirror. On its reflective surface sits a silver ring. Though clearly tempted, she doesn’t take it. Is she deterred by a distaste for wealth? Or is it a disdain for a prize too paltry? The hawk emerges briefly at her shoulder, wings outstretched, restless. They both observe the glint of silver. When the bird flaps away, Nico looks up to follow the arc of its flight. Back in the mirror, clouds scud across the sky. The light dims several degrees. The ring remains untouched.  

SEVEN.
A forbidding landscape of volcanic rock. Tufts of vegetation mark the edges of a small pool of water. Nico kneels down to drink several handfuls. She’s dressed in black cape, blue blouse, long white skirt. This is the first time we’ve seen her outside the castle. It’s enticing to interpret this as an escape, an attempt to live beyond confined walls, but that’s probably too optimistic. As she sets off, it begins to rain. 

EIGHT.
Nico lies across a desolate stretch of black rocks, head thrown back, eyes shut. Her parted lips hint at both ecstasy and pain. Her body stays motionless so long that we believe she’s dead. Perhaps the water was poisoned. Just when we’re certain we’ve reached the end of the film, Nico’s eyelids flutter and she surfaces from a profound stupor. After returning to life for several indifferent seconds, Nico closes her eyes and dies once more, or at least she assumes that pose.  

NINE.
Her cape billowing behind her, Nico charts a path across an overgrown field. Stalks of purple wildflowers rise as high as her waist. Pausing to examine a particular bloom, she looks straight at us, returning our gaze, like she’s finally ready to confide. A sense of impending revelation builds. But even if she spoke, there’s no sound. 

TEN.
In a later film, Nico recites a lyric from her notebook: “Sometimes we must keep from bringing certain thoughts up to the light.” 

ELEVEN.
Nico is stretched out on a wooden dock, a river flowing languorously behind her. She’s arranged with her knees up, showing off her leather boots, but she can’t manage that position for long. Shutting her eyes, her chin starts to dip. She nods off, overtaken by slumber, tumbling deep into a dream. But aren’t we already there? Isn’t that what this is? 

TWELVE.
Nico is now out on the water, perched precariously on the edge of a wooden rowboat. She’s swaddled in her black cape, a spectral figure in danger of slipping into a realm beyond dreams. One arm is already plunged deep into the river. Her somnambulant face hovers inches above the water, but unlike Narcissus there is no reflection to admire, only a blank surface. The camera pulls back to show us the boat in the context of the current, the swirling waters slowly rotating the keel as it lists onto its side, the better to admire its polished planks and flawless structure. Its beauty fills the frame for several seconds. The person it holds inside is no longer visible. 

Jeff Jackson is the author of the novels Mira Corpora and Destroy All Monsters. He recently completed a three-part novel entitled The Disappeared. His band Julian Calendar’s debut album Speaking A Dead Language was just released on Bandcamp. 

Boy or Girl by James Nulick

Nico in his The Velvet Underground & Nico shirt.

My name is Nico. It has always been Nico. It felt like a good name when I tried it on. My mother named me after a singer most people my age don’t even know. On most days it sounds like a boy’s name, though on some days, usually a Sunday morning, it sounds like a girl’s name, but I’m definitely not a girl. My name sounding like a girl’s name doesn’t bother me anymore. It used to, like when I was a kid, hey faggot, how come you got a girl’s name, but not anymore. There aren’t very many Nicos, maybe a barber once in one of those ghetto barbershops where everyone is tripping over themselves to look cool, a skin fade kid with a Wahl in one hand and a girl’s digits in the other, grey sweatpants and black Vans and a drooping eyelid that’s somehow endearing, I’m stealing glances of him while in the chair waiting for the next call, hoping he’s the one, the double quicksilver echoing my reflection in a thousand shop windows, I’ll be your mirror, and when you have an unusual name like mine you always pay attention to others you share it with, like when you notice all the cars just like your car, my mother’s favorite song, Sunday morning, a song father approved of, when my days were laid out for me, my life simple because everything was preplanned, I didn’t have to think of what to wear, what to say, deciding if I was a boy or a girl, the fate of the nation trapped in the web of my lattice fingers. I pull on my threadbare brown corduroy pants and a green cardigan mother found at Goodwill for 12.99, so today I will be a boy. 

James Nulick is the author of several highly acclaimed novels including Plastic Soul, The Moon Down to Earth, and Valencia. He is working on a new novel. 

DECEMBER 2025 Guest Editor Is MATTHEW KINLIN!!! Theme: My Heart Is Empty: Responses to The Life and Work of Nico

Burning House Press are excited to welcome Matthew Kinlin as the fifth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today Matt will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of December.

Submissions are open from today 1st December – and will remain open until 21st DECEMBER.

Matt’s theme for the month is as follows

My Heart Is Empty: Responses to The Life and Work of Nico

Matthew Kinlin lives and writes in Glasgow. His published workst include Teenage Hallucination (Orbis Tertius Press, 2021); Curse Red, Curse Blue, Curse Green (Sweat Drenched Press, 2021); The Glass Abattoir (D.F.L. Lit, 2023); Songs of Xanthina (Broken Sleep Books, 2023); Psycho Viridian (Broken Sleep Books, 2024) and So Tender a Killer (Filthy Loot, 2025). Instagram: @obscene_mirror.

——

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: NICO/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 21st December – and will reopen again on 1st January 2026/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Matthew Kinlin – friends, arsonistas, send our December 2025 guest editor your magic!

Dancing On The Silk Razor, a film by D.W. Young

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).

https://www.dwyoungfilm.com/

NOVEMBER 2025 Guest Editor Is C.C. O’HANLON!!! THEME/S: JOURNEYS

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

~~~

JOURNEYS: Physical, Psychological, and Imaginary, embracing words and images, in all forms, as well as complexity, resisting the superficial, algorithmic narratives of social media.

~~~

Photo by Given Rozell.

~~~

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.

_______

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!

Data Lake (excerpt) by Judson Hamilton

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.”

Judson Hamilton lives in Wroclaw, Poland.
Bluesky @judsonhamilton.bsky.social
https://neutralspaces.co/judson_hamilton/

Fingerprint by Michael L Sevy

we had a dinette, the house was too small for a proper dining room, there was a painting on the wall, notable because artwork was minimal in the house, I was fascinated by this painting, it looked European to me in a vague way as at nine years of age I knew nothing of life outside the US, it was a river scene, a river surrounded by a forest, a mountainous forest, with a small house about a third of the way up on the mountain surrounded by evergreens, I think it would be called a chalet, there’s a European word, it pronounced funny, and on the river was a small boat with a man standing astern navigating with a long pole, the painting was always there on that dinette wall, I didn’t know its origins, how, where and why my parents bought it, after some time, after months of glances, I made an observation, the perspective was wrong, the chalet was too small to be real, or the boat with the man was too large, even taking into account that the boat with the man was closer to the viewer it felt like sizes were off, once noticed this was all I could think about when looking at the painting, this mismatch of proportions, if happening to walk through the dinette I glanced up at the wall, all I saw were the two mismatched objects and my mind became stuck in a comparison loop, judging dimensions and wondering, but then sometime later, more glances, I noticed something else was off, the paint was darkened to the right of the chalet, a chaletshadow, and the paint was darkened to the left of the boat, a boatshadow, right then left, as if the chalet was painted under morning sky and the boat was painted under afternoon sky, or as if there were two suns over Europe, and once noticed that was all I could think about when looking at the painting, this mismatch of illumination, my mind stuck in a newer superseding comparison loop, and then still, sometime later, yet more glances, I stood up on a chair and gazed at the painting, closer, my nose inches from the chalet, I examined each brushstroke though it was hard to tell a brush was used, the paint was glopped on thick as paste, perhaps a palette knife was the artist’s implement of choice, and this was fine, interesting, but there was one glop, a dark green section of forest just above and to the left of the chalet, where, my face almost touching the canvas, I discovered unmistakably a fingerprint embedded into the painting as if instead of a brush or knife the artist had smooshed this one glop with a finger, it looked purposeful, the brushes needed cleaning, the palette knife was dirty, but here was a finger, relatively clean and always available, the artist’s original tool, I could follow the loops, arches and whorls around and around within the print, no one else noticed this fingerprint, only I, my secret, as a child I was not afforded many, after months of glances and after some time, no other family member knew this existed, and that impression was all I could think about when looking at the painting from that discovery on, the chalet no longer existed, the boat with the man and his pole no longer existed, the mismatched perspective, the contrasting shadows, all forgotten, the painting was just a fingerprint, every glance at the painting caused wonder, a loop, my mind dominated by a single fingerprint, a fingerprint that belonged to an unknown artist, maybe European, working hours every day in his studio with his paints and his palette knife and his finger

Michael L Sevy is a writer & composer from Vermont. His work has been published in 3:AM Magazine & minor literature[s]. He was the leader of punk bands Cold Dogs in the Courtyard and Bonus Marchers. You can find him on bsky at @mlsevy.bsky.social

Foils by Daisy Lyle

b/w image of a seated woman, a seated young man, and a man on his feet; about them a ghostly female form

I

Millet’s spring mind soared red and skittish as an over-angled kite; in summer it entered the usual back-stall, and by August it had dived low enough for him to have another go at his wrists. This year he made an especial hash of it; fumbling with the false-economy razorblades until he ended up cutting his palms as much as anything else.

Afterwards the ambulance dumped him in the aisle of the A&E, where he lay on the hindmost of a metal spine of gurneys down the building’s centreline. Up on the ceiling, a loose panel exposed a pecking wedge of darkness. He turned on his side; the wall’s blank surface, gouged and spilling brown and fibrous shreds, was in worse nick than his skin.

After the stitching they left him in a side room, alone but for the slurping, whistling breaths of someone on the other side of a curtain. Wires snaked around its pleats to a bleeping machine in his own half of the room. His eyes tracked the glowing plots on the monitor; six months after his firing from Aventrix he still couldn’t stop himself subjecting the signals to confused analysis: window functions, discrete transforms, then breakdown into smaller sub-transforms. Radix two, four, sixteen … When the dragonfly lights on the screen began to sting his eyes he gave up his calculations and pulled the bedsheet over his head. Seeking distraction from the thin fabric’s vinegar-and-dead-skin scent, he tried to think its crumpled underside into the hills and valleys of that Stevenson poem. The Pleasant Land of Counter … Counter …

“… pain?”

The syllable repeated, a chain of islands in a sea of blurred speech, and he realized the nurse had arrived, with a prompt to rate his suffering out of ten. He thought the gurney was creaking, some part of the rails extending on either side of him.

“N over two,” he mumbled, and it seemed to do.

II

In the morning they had him shower the intact parts of his body. Two quivering shoots of something like watercress poked from the cubicle drain. He hoped they were real; he couldn’t bear the idea of hallucinating such lumpen symbolism. Then he was ferried to a psychiatric hospital on the county border, where his mind banked gently into the institutional mist. He spent much of the next few days contemplating more bedlinen, the troughs and peaks of mountain ranges hugged in soft shadow relief.

He wasn’t so keen on the topography of his outspread hands. In recent months they’d thinned out, the newly slackened skin across their backs trumpeting the onset of real ageing. When he turned them over, the mess of his healing palms troubled him. The scabs didn’t quite match the cuts he remembered making, though his memory was a joke. They kept him well-drugged. Quetiapine, lorazepam. Sometimes in the depths of the night a sister came to shine the round white beam of a pen torch on his eyelids. If they fluttered open, hands offered a pellet of zopiclone, the shadows of uniformed arms beating slowly on the walls. Sometimes, as sleep took hold, his throat felt like there was much more than one pill in it, a smooth, hard, comforting clutch.

III

They began to let him out. First just the grounds, the café and shop, in low outbuildings that reminded him of the old airfield Portakabins. He sat nursing weak coffee, watching the wings of the main building extend into milky light, until one day he and some others were put on a minibus and taken to the nearby riverside park.

On the drive one of their escorts enthused about the new fitness parcours along the banks, with special bodybuilding rigs, Ninja wheels, a machine for chest presses.

“Most of that junk’s already out of order,” his roommate Whitlock confided as they got off the bus. “The screws fail, and they’re a special kind. The council can’t be bothered to replace them.”

They quickly passed the old visitor centre, a silent cube of glass covered in crude paintings of leaf and feather that couldn’t hide the underlying curls of dustsheet. The trail head was marked by a pocked information sign. Lodged in one of its bulges, between a badly-drawn muskrat and a peeling heron, was a cluster of tiny pale green balls.

“They’ve got the map here,” said Whitlock.

“I can see that.”

“No, I mean the map butterfly. Araschnia levana, or prorsa, depending on the season. Invasive species, but I’d still like to spot the bleeder. Never set eyes on the black summer form.”

Millet murmured a vague answer to stem the flood of nature facts. The scabs on his palms were itching like hell, much worse than the ones on his arms.

IV

They walked on. After a while he ceased to notice the rise and fall of human voices. To his left was a dazzle of light on winding reed-lined water; foliage encroached on his right. Alder and beech, bramble hordes and white bells of bindweed, parted only by the green metal curves of the fitnessmachines. On each of their instruction diagrams, the silhouette figure looked less like a person.

Finally the path made a swan-neck double bend, and he found himself in front of the most preposterous contraption yet. The paint on this one had almost entirely flaked off, exposing a tall structure of rust-brown metal crisscrossed with streaks of faded cream. It was studded with appendages, and a maze of gears, flanges and blades, culminating in something like a giant upturned wishbone. The sight of the two symmetrical handles fanning out on either side of a discoid seat prompted a distant memory of gym adverts, and then he saw the instruction diagram, with its caption:

BUTTERFLY MACHINE

At the sight of the wonky grid pattern running across the underside of the depicted creature’s wings, the scabs on his palms raged until something in him hatched. When he sat down and grabbed the handles above his head, he felt the fire in his hands drain out into the cold metal. Warming it. Informing it. Loading the chart of his scars into its central navigation system. The antennae slewed and thrummed; great metal wings unfolded with a shivering clang and began to beat, then it bore him into the air.

V

Sounds rose up from the riverbank, individual screams convolved into a single wavering keen, but he couldn’t have looked down if he’d wanted to. When the machine broke through the clouds, it dropped its payload of eggs. As they whistled towards the earth he let go of the handles and the craft itself fell away from him. He hung for a second in the air, hands whipped aloft, before each palm burst apart, discretizing again and again into clouds of tiny flitting things; after a moment his mind followed suit, merry black thoughts whirling up to the sun.

Daisy Lyle is an engineering translator & dark fantasy writer based in Normandie, France. Bluesky http://@novembergrau.bsky.social

SEPTEMBER 2025 Guest Editor Is Alexander Booth!!! THEME/S: LANDSCAPE // LABYRINTH

Burning House Press are excited to welcome Alexander Booth as the fourth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today Alexander will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of September.

Submissions are open from today 1st September – and will remain open until 25TH SEPTEMBER.

Alexander’s theme/s for the month are as follows

—LANDSCAPE

LABYRINTH—

Black Square and Red Square by Kazmir Malevich

_____

LANDSCAPE // LABYRINTH

*

When the painter’s friends, however, looked around for the painter, they saw that he was gone—that he was in the picture. There, he followed the little path that led to the door, paused before it quite still, turned, smiled, and disappeared through the narrow opening. 

–        Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900 (trans. Howard Eiland)

*

Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows. 

           Gaston Bachelard (trans. Maria Jolas)

*

“Though Minos blocks escape by land or water,”

Daedalus said, “surely the sky is open,

And that’s the way we’ll go. Minos’ dominion

Does not include the air.”

–        Ovid, Metamorphosis (trans. Rolfe Humphries)

_____

Alexander Booth is a poet, translator, collage artist and printmaker who lives in Berlin. Recent translations include books by Friederike Mayröcker, Alexander Kluge, Gerhard Rühm, and a new translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His collection of poems Triptych was published in 2021 and Kantor in 2023.

__________

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: LANDSCAPE/POETRY Or LABYRINTH/FICTION

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 SEPTEMBER – and will reopen again on 1st OCTOBER 2025/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Alexander Booth – friends, arsonistas, send our SEPTEMBER 2025 guest editor your magic!

“The Taste of Gin” by Elliott Gish

Continue reading ““The Taste of Gin” by Elliott Gish” →

AUGUST 2025 Guest Editor Is stephanie roberts!!! THEME: Better Than It Looks

Burning House Press are excited to welcome stephanie roberts as the third BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today stephanie will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of AUGUST.

Submissions are open from today 1st August – and will remain open until 25TH AUGUST.

stephanie’s theme for the month is as follows

—BETTER THAN IT LOOKS—

________

stephanie roberts is the prize-winning, Canadian author of the poetry collection UNMET (Biblioasis Books, April 2025). The poet Lisa Russ Spaar, writing for the Adroit Review, said, “One emerges from the agile linguistic theatrics of this book [UNMET] feeling requited, met, seen, and inspired—a sensation that moves from writer to reader. From daring to darling.” Her debut collection rushes from the river disappointment (McGill-Queen’s University Press, May 2020) was an A.M. Klein Poetry Prize finalist. Widely featured in periodicals and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe such as Poetry Magazine, Atlanta Review, Event Magazine, New York Quarterly Books, Verse Daily, Crannóg (Ireland), and The Stockholm Review of Literature, she is the winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018 (Black Mountain Press). www.oceansandfire.com

stephanie roberts lives in Beauharnois Québec. The author of UNMET (Biblioasis Books, April 2025) and rushes from the river disappointment (MQUP, 2020) an A.M. Klein Poetry Prize finalist, she is a 2025 Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient and the winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018 (Black Mountain Press). www.oceansandfire.com

stephanie

linktr.ee/ringtales

__________

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: BETTER THAN IT LOOKS/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 AUGUST – and will reopen again on 1st SEPTEMBER 2025/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing stephanie roberts– friends, arsonistas, send our AUGUST 2025 guest editor your magic!

“XI : LUST : TETH : LEO” by Kawai Shen

Continue reading ““XI : LUST : TETH : LEO” by Kawai Shen” →

“Allegory for the polyutopia” by Kate Feld

Continue reading ““Allegory for the polyutopia” by Kate Feld” →

“dark things under her tongue” by Kristy Bowen

Continue reading ““dark things under her tongue” by Kristy Bowen” →

“the somnambulists” by Kristy Bowen

Continue reading ““the somnambulists” by Kristy Bowen” →

“Pigeon Blood Cabochon” by Kieran Devaney

Continue reading ““Pigeon Blood Cabochon” by Kieran Devaney” →

“Mood Ring” by Laura Joyce

Continue reading ““Mood Ring” by Laura Joyce” →

3 POEMS by Simon Ravenscroft

Dry Chaconne

the air was parched                the earth in drought                   when you left me
thinking of Lorca                the desire of the rain            remembrance
of the earth          the smooth earth when it rains               has a scent
as you did           when you came to me                     in splinters
a weight of longing          a turning wheel                straining the fibres
of your countenance             blurred visions              flecks of silvering light
the smallest gestures of your eyes         arabesque, interlacing
rhythmic in the shimmering air            shivers of electric blue
a tapestry of shadow              layers of ice melting
the rain falling            the desire of the rain               a memory
of the earth              in Lorca shards falling
splinters of rain               the dry earth around me
our ritual gestures                  fragility of longing                       the suffering
of the rain                    in the chasms of your eyes                    an infinite waiting
for the simplest things                  infinite light                       infinite heat
a daze of deep yellow                     layers of ice melting
a tapestry of shadow                            the unsparing earth
the rain in Lorca                    the fibres of your eyes
all the fevers of the seas

as you wish

line bright with horizon
golden residues of day


α        hours of the dwindling warmth
β          warmth of the dwindling hours
γ         dwindling warmth of the hours


dwindling sadness of the river
shoreline bright with stone
glistening time under starry moonlight
now quiet, all is becoming

Delta Oscillations

iterate

calm stream of aporetic present
oblivion of sleep
dreams grow more lively after dawn
close your peepers

reiterate

brief moments of gloss contentment
needs of obsidian
sleep will wash you with slow waves
night will keep us

INTERLUDE by Max Restaino

The roadside is lined with old dead men, dessicated limbs splayed to the sky
and soil past their noses. Black clouds split open and spray themselves at the
world. Clots of bioluminescent gore bounce off the frozen mud.

These walls and windows come
and go, drifting out of sight
between long blinks. There are
morning where my ceiling is the
sky, singing with wind and the
ghost of an old train whistle,
desolate moan stretched along

Stains hiding in the fold where heaven is supposed to be.

The white dome bubbling off the bottom-front of my face like a blister ready to
puke itself into the open air. Bile that rolls across the ceiling and drips

off the
top of the doorjamb. Sick light swims through the glisten.

The waves lapping the shore erode the world, ocean spilling over the stems rooting
this place to the dirt.

Throbbing gray whole, wet and concave, lip bejeweled in a half-crescent of calcific
protrusions. A well of nothing, parturient with a small pink lump, goosefleshed
sinuous oyster. A tale distilled to its base, retching that whispers a cold window down
the empty hallway.

I fall, blind, uncapped, spilling over the walls, absorbed into the porous
labyrinth of hallways and boxes; a brick tower blooming upside down—a
stalactite on the sky—waves of grey reflected on the bottom of clouds—slow
red lightning that cracks the surface of the ocean like shattering glass.

Overhead is the choppy surface of the sea. The remnants of shipwrecks and
oil rigs paint the horizon like a hanged city skyline. Below, roiling grey clouds
and long rolls of thunder. Shadows that could be the backs of ancient
leviathan that carved that great valley in the world and in time.

The moment loops in the porous mortar disintegrating between the bricks—boxes of different lives glued together—a scream upon deaf ears—radios playing in empty rooms—whispering a breeze of static electricity down the hallway.

The gun is in the drawer of my desk. The bubble of infection in the earth splits and wafts a blizzard of
sporous disease into the campsite. Noxious fumes stir the fire into a frenzy that scorches the detritus on
the ground. Bodies thrown together as the ground tilts—flesh melding on contact—a pile of thrashing
limbs and gnashing maws and rolling eyes—dissociated personalities—memories smashed to a
paste—mixed together—smeared across the underside of the forest canopy—catching
evaporation—raining grey mildew onto the red brick ruins.

*

The film grain captured in the still image wraps around me like a mesh of static electricity—picked apart by nervous nails snapping at my skin like pins and needles—blood flowing home, passing heat to their tunnels—exploding from the iron ring at the end of the barrel—pale mollusks that splatter underfoot.

The forest will be shorn away. Nowhere left to hide but under the soil. Trees sent
down river, blanched like the heaped corpses of death camp victims—algae flowing
along the rivers surface, shredded by currents—foaming white rapids—on the living
room floor vomiting—collecting bricks from the ruined building—slashing my wrists
in a bathtub—swallowing a fistful of Xanax.

We exist in footsteps. Shadows rippling like water. Colorless light caught in your
eyes. A storm brewing between stones. Hunting whispers in the mortar. Wet red
dripping from the fingers on your cross-brace.

Flakes of memory drift past the backs of my eyes. The world is born in pale gray light. Shadows bloom from the horizon. Candlelight quivering against the darkness like oil in water.

Your skin doesn’t fit right and there are too many teeth in your mouth.

Moving white specks like storm-blown snow swirl in the air over his head. He doesn’t
look up from the page that is filling with ink. Black lines bleed as they cross and wave
and fall over the paper. Flakes getting caught in his gore matted hair.

I’m still breathing in the spaces you can’t see.

JUNE 2025 Guest Editor Is JOHN TREFRY!!! THEME: INANIMISM

Burning House Press are excited to welcome JOHN TREFRY as the first BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today JOHN will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of JUNE.

Submissions are open from today – and will remain open until 25TH JUNE.

JOHN’S theme for the month is as follows

—INANIMISM—

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: INANIMISM/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 JUNE – and will reopen again on 1st JULY2025/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing JOHN TREFRY – friends, arsonistas, send our JUNE 2025 guest editor your magic!

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑