mode time of anonymity music disillusion she’s owned 0 secret clone cyberoctave my rest storage they assure the mirrorstorm outerfeel placenta constellation and the exciting constellation eye of the apparent dream your baby’s eyeballs into your womb babel into the blue desert to the desert reverse movement of a comfortable inhabitant of childhood mirrors in space… hell external hell i was occupying is moved to gimmick suspension was placed because what was intended was a barbarian maze of cell breaks that was longer than the male blood breathing into the zone bar_unknown demon had a causal soul storage of sorrow is why its cellular circulation is hosted by the night corpse of the wolf’s embryo::: she’s a chaos from its host
Continue reading “Mirrorstorm by Kenji Siratori”
Photo by Naomi August on Unsplash
story: The Dog
Their clothes are ironed on them in the shape of death. Soggy bread of a sky looking over, he gargles time release capsules. Not enough pills milled for the morning after. The frosted flakes expired; he flops between her shrubbery, bulge withering beneath a dress. “It’s no longer in style to be a bad lay,” she says. He vows to return her to the urn, drops her off for cognitive behaviorals instead. “Listen to a woman once and you become her therapy dog,” his mother always said, teeth gnawing through his skull like fly eggs, speaking through a bisection of his face in swarms. “We’re all Satan’s puppet, a populace atop the hoof.” He hears her talk to the shrink through walls so thin he wishes they were her clothes. He tends to end up overacting in the bear costume she makes him wear. They’ve been brining bite marks on each other. In utter silence their chalky mouths resemble apple seeds, if worms took the core. “What eats the worms after they eat us?” Entwined guts, reshuffling microbiomes a couple viruses at a time, they’re not worth the ekphrastic flesh of their penny masks.
poem: The Hunt
we flicker from pixel to pixel
the dream of this inverted world
our bodies dissolved into digits
the horizon flattens and winks out
into an oblate blank plane, stretched
thin between plates of strange glass
we are reborn with ease here
free to reconstruct, to glut ourselves
on electric subjectives
Photo by Christian Fregnan on Unsplash
poem: Take me to a Place
Take me to a place
where you feel no pain
where no one cries
where no troubles exist
Show me the path
that I need to follow
to find this land
where everything works
Can anyone hear me cry?
Because right now
I am so very lost
so very tired and broken
Photo by Patryk Grądys on Unsplash
poem: time travel is cruel & kind
you’re me. i’m not
one but so many.
you do not walk.
empty and rootless i drift. i’m
you. as everyone digs out caste histories and thump their chests and thighs you drift and i turn at right angles. time’s not linear but parallel. adrift i turn left right left you turn at left angles.
cyclone of light or what, i say
Photo by Wendy Scofield on Unsplash
poem: Building Blocks
Sometimes I just want to buy something
fuck like it’s the last hurrah
build an ant farm
although I don’t like ants
I want to do a thing – some kind of thing
(I started this when I was walking)
and then climbed into myself Continue reading “Three Poems by Donna Dallas”
Photo by Inja Pavlić on Unsplash
poem: Noise of life
The last autumn leaf now falling
And drifting towards alien lands,
Barren boughs of the maple tree
Shivering in the wind’s cold clasp,
Besotted moths still chasing flames,
Days seeking nights pursuing days, Continue reading “Three Poems by Mugu Ganesan”
Photo by Mark de Jong on Unsplash
poem: The Painter
How do I answer
the call of canvas
when I have no hands
to spin light into paint
to sift sun and shadow
like yolk from its egg Continue reading “New Poem by Lucy Whitehead”
Photo by Makenna Entrikin on Unsplash
poem: Driving
The moan of late-night cars cruising the highway—
ghostly, but not ghosts. Call them cries at 3 a.m.,
memories bursting forth from the brain,
gasps in bed, a shout to the darkness.
Or call them inadequacies, pains,
breaths too quick, perpetual reveries:
that time you, sick, quit your job and fled
to anywhere, multiple places, seeing multiple
sights and multiple people, all who smiled
and looked around, seemingly happy,
but inside were bursting Continue reading “Two Poems by Jon Bishop”
Photo by Alekzan Powell on Unsplash
poem: DEAR LANDLORD
after Bob and Boots
Please don’t put a price on my apartment.
It’s yours more than mine, though. You can’t
help but exploit that.
So I’ll help you along.
I know your histories of arson. Your predilection
for insurance claims. I’m no dummy—
I know hiphop was born from the sepulcher
of a burning Bronx. But let me do
the burning. Let me clear the place out and gut it.
It’s drafty as fuck in here, in there. Continue reading “Three Poems By Joe Rathgeber”
Photo by Jonathan Pendleton on Unsplash
poem: out of the woods
I’ve been standing here so long the leaves have begun to pile up around my feet. In the distance I can hear sirens. Here comes the rain. The sun shines next. How did they know where to go? Maybe they didn’t, those sirens, maybe they were lost, I think they were lost, wailing like that. Maybe that’s what always happens with sirens, they can’t find where they are supposed to go and they wail in fear and sorrow. Nobody gets helped, the fire burns down the house, the ill do not get taken to the hospital but either recover or die all on their own. The suspects get clean away, they go into the basement and start counting their take. Someone has to deal with the corpse though. They have a designated corpse handler, I suspect. They laugh at all those wailing sirens. They get into fights over how to divide up the drugs and money, but there’s nobody to call. Some of them kill each other, which is probably a good thing, or at least some people would think so. Not their mothers though. Well, not most of their mothers. The mean mothers are glad. The mean mothers are the ones who made sure the instructions were wrong and the maps broken so the sirens could never get where they meant to go in the first place. So those particular mothers sigh, smile at each other, brush their hands together, go back into their several kitchens, make a gin and tonic (light on the tonic, dear) and relax. What is that? Oh! the birds have started finding my hair and I think there are leaves budding out and that’s a good thing, it will help hide me. Even though the sirens can’t find me, I am still afraid my mother will. I may stay here. Why not? I am hidden real well now, and the squirrels have started bringing me nuts. Look. A bird places a morsel in my mouth. I know I will not starve. One day I will leave the woods, but not today.
Continue reading “Two Poems by Kyla Houbolt”
Photo by Cam Fattahi on Unsplash
short story: Point Nemo
He’s been on two journeys in his lifetime. Firstly, Antarctica. With his son, Mark. Arriving by air, setting out (despite all the warnings), saying to the seventeen year old boy, We must take our first reading from the coastline. Mark saying, How can we do that? It’s covered in a billion tonnes of ice.
That doesn’t matter. Continue reading “Short Story by Stephen Orr”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome OLIVIA CRONK as our FEBRUARY 2020 guest editor! As of today Olivia will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of FEBRUARY.
Submissions are open from today – 1st FEBRUARY and will remain open until 23RD FEBRUARY.
Olivia‘s theme for the month is as follows
STUDIES IN THE HIGH (GAUDY) DOMESTIC
Continue reading “FEBRUARY 2020 Guest Editor Is OLIVIA CRONK!!! THEME: STUDIES IN THE HIGH (GAUDY) DOMESTIC”
VISION EDITION JANUARY 2020 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY REVERSE BUTCHER
Continue reading “VISION EDITION JANUARY 2020 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY REVERSE BUTCHER”
LABYRINTH EDITION DECEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY DHIYANAH HASSAN
Continue reading “LABYRINTH EDITION DECEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY DHIYANAH HASSAN”
NO MACHINE WITHOUT A GHOST EDITION NOVEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY MAUVE PERLE TAHAT/ARTWORK BY MORIAH M. MYLOD
Continue reading “NO MACHINE WITHOUT A GHOST EDITION NOVEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY MAUVE PERLE TAHAT/ARTWORK BY MORIAH M. MYLOD”
ALTERED STATES EDITION SEPTEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY YANINA SPIZZIRRI
Continue reading “ALTERED STATES EDITION SEPTEMBER 2019 GUEST EDITED/CURATED BY YANINA SPIZZIRRI”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 