November 29th, 2020
The Dirty Truth About Butterflies
It’s easy for a religiously bred
(misled) girl to make an Eden of
a garden, angels of winged soon dead,
repopulating in three weeks. But love’s
amino acids butterflies won’t find
in agapanthus nectar, waterfalls —
Continue reading “Womannotated – The Dirty Truth About Butterflies”
Joseph Ellison Brockway is a poet, translator, and Spanish professor. He likes to juxtapose words and signs to disrupt the language on the page and to disturb the reader’s thoughts. Many of his poems also experiment with ideas and images that explore the human psyche and existence. Joseph’s poetry has recently been published in L’Éphémère Review, Moonchild Magazine, SurVision Magazine, and Surreal Poetics. He can be found roaming the socialmediaverse at @JosephEBrockway.
remember Hollow Man? Kevin Bacon
stuck in our seat forced a rapist’s point
of view women can’t see him
we go unseen reliving through
leading to his neighbor her apartment
stuck in our seat as credits roll
I should have left before credits
still without closure Rhona Mitra
credited only as Neighbor
Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. Etzel is the recipient of a 2017 Troy Scroggins Award and the 2017 Topeka ARTSConnect Arty Award in Literary Arts. He co-edited Ichabods Speak Out: Poems in the Age of Me, Too with Dr. Jericho Hockett which features poems against sexual assault from the Washburn University and Topeka Community. He is a TALK Scholar for the Kansas Humanities Council and leads poetry workshops in various Kansas spaces.
Third shift at the night factory
assembles the simple, elegant machine of night.
Workers, like figures in a shadow play,
hammer the fitted parts home,
extend the handle of a wrench with a pipe,
and brace a foot against the stubborn bolt.
Engineers pour over the schematics of the moon
trembling on the surface of oil in open buckets.
In the last of the dark hours,
welders extinguish their torches
while the foreman inspects the welds
with a candle held behind the seams.
Pinholes in the bead or casting
fill the factory with starlight,
a constellation of flaws, a myth and map of stars
we made to find our way out.
Queued at the gate and parting
at the whistle into morning,
shift workers call to each other:
‘night, see ya, so long, take care
Stephen Frech has earned degrees from Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Cincinnati. He has published three volumes of poetry: Toward Evening and the Day Far Spent (Kent State UP), If Not For These Wrinkles of Darkness (White Pine Press), and The Dark Villages of Childhood (Midwest Writing Center) His fourth volume titled A Palace of Strangers is No City, a sustained narrative of prose poetry/flash fiction, has been published by Cervena Barva Press. He published a translation of poetry from the Dutch: Menno Wigman’s Zwart als kaviaar/Black as Caviar. He is founder and editor of Oneiros Press, publisher of limited edition, letterpress poetry broadsides. Oneiros broadsides have been purchased by special collections libraries around the world, among them the Newberry Library (Chicago), the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the University of Amsterdam Print Collection. Stephen Frech is Professor of English at Millikin University
as the missiles launched by the famished, agency-severed headless palmyras make love as yatchan/yatchini in the expansive space above the sea, unusually intense acid rain pours down which enthralls the soft-spaceships orbiting the earth.
‘the upholders of absolute truth say—.’ in the process of putting down: ‘in this wounded era in which a few of those still remain, those who had lost along with their limbs and memories their history to those that call themselves civilized; in this era that makes one wonder how is it even possible to be this much cultured, in this cultured era in which the ancient invisible technology that creates histories out of fictions and makes them myths has meshed itself finely with high technology, truly they say: a society that has not written down and preserved its history proper will be wiped ou—’; in the process of putting down and reading this, does a missile called silence advance up toward my vocal cord and sever my part-asinine chain of thought.
the multiplied yatchi/yatcha missiles fly past mountains and cities invisibly, lighting up electromagnetic spectrum, picking and savoring microwaves, but unsatiated and still famished, they migrate in many directions, departing and arriving toward the targets.
Ahimaz Rajessh (@ahimaaz) has been published recently with Marlskarx, Burning House Press, Big Echo: Critical SF, Paint Bucket, Speculative 66, formercactus, Dream Pop Press and MoonPark Review. He lives in the Union of India.
our feet have bottomed
out in the earth-slit.
let it be known
buck was once the name
of a dog, but not a dog
of mine. my toddler
arms suffered hives
from his lick, burned
redhot from within
himself, a nautilus
my own body
could not shape. in a kitchen
like any other, the smoke
left a beeswarm. before
fire, i figured allergies, my skin
blistering honeyblood. a maggot
lived in buck
for nine days before
anyone noticed. when plucked,
it was golf-sized, full of
dog. mother fed me
a milkbone for a moment of
peace, bleached the
sink of its bloodsplatter until
our dishes were
poison. the sun rises &
there is less
& less of us. we hold
last vigils by the jesus-
shrine, ask for him to
be with us & in us – a
maggot. how afraid
they must be, jesus
and the dog, having never
seen hell before. we are
constantly feeding; the holes
are already
in all of us.
Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing). Her collection, Lizzie, Speak, won White Stag Publishing’s 2018 poetry contest, and her newest collection, FOREVERHAUS, is forthcoming from White Stag in 2020. She is a senior editor for Luna Luna Magazine. You can find her work featured or forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Electric Literature, Nat. Brut, Black Warrior Review, Fairy Tale Review, Bone Bouquet Journal, and more. For further information, please follow @kaileytedesco.
Aaand that’s a wrap! Burning House Press would like to thank November’s Guest Editor PAUL HAWKINS for selecting, curating and presenting an INCREDIBLE array of writing and art on the theme FACING UP TO THE FUTURE – and for all of the endeavour and hard work that has gone into managing the month – THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, PAUL!!!
Massive thank you also goes to everyone who contributed to the theme and all who continue to send BHP your writing and art – we are so happy and grateful that you entrust us with your work, thank you!!! xX
Here it is, the full FACING UP TO THE FUTURE EDITION – every selection in one place for you to read/peruse – enjoy!!! xX Continue reading “FACING UP TO THE FUTURE EDITION – SELECTED/CURATED/PRESENTED BY NOVEMBER 2018 GUEST EDITOR PAUL HAWKINS”
We first met at the launch of the Refugee anthology, Over Land, Over Sea. Poems for those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Press 2015). What was that project like for you?
It’s been very positive – a great idea. As an ordinary citizen, especially, or even in our current political climate, it’s easy to feel powerless. Ambrose (Musiyiwa) whose poem The Man Who Ran Through the Tunnel stimulated the anthology) thought this would be a way to mobilise lots of voices, not just from Leicester but from across the country and the world. Continue reading “A Burning House Press Interview With Lydia Towsey”
I sang to my Father
on his deathbed.
He had not spoken a word
in days, cancer-ridden,
organs collapsing, high on morphine,
but I knew he could still hear me. Continue reading “2 Poems by Scott Thomas Outlar”
One moss harbor,
winding clocks in center’s orbit, wobbling
circus –
three camera’s, a candle vessel – paddling through power lines, black then white.
Sure – a noise dreamt cricket –
Weave these prayers into flux –
refine metals, resemble the limbo we sing in fisheries,
under long,
black silhouettes
shining onto one light, our mugwort song. Continue reading “2 Poems by Fin Sorrel”
Five hundred miles off
On a night of no surrender
Amid the bedrock and the pine
In the anonymous rooms
Where we whisper salvations
To the prayer flags on the walls
For the sake of our sins
Now fixed upon the surface
Of the love we yield to the grave
At the gates of some heaven
When the message comes clear
This damn destiny is all we deserve
The one who begs
the elements
to be no more
than elemental
also prays
that his wife’s mouth
may be more
than the dust
she swallows trailing
you around
the dry seasons.
It’s simple that way.
Simple compounds
into the whole
of the universe. It
does that every time.
The hardest worked waters wore out
The rivers lost in time
Perhaps it is a way to maintain happiness without people
To fly freely from
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 
The Arsonist Magazine Editon 01 Now Available For Purchase!!!
The Arsonist Magazine Edition 01 – available to purchase here
Featuring the best poetry, flash fiction, photography, art, interviews and features from around the world, including the UK, Japan, Canada, USA, Malaysia, India, Philippines, Sweden:
stephanie roberts – Saquina Karla C. Guiam – Penny Goring – Adrianna Robertson – Anneghem Wall – Dawn Fredericks – badpoem – Dean Lilleyman – Antony Owen – Aina Izzah – Bruno Neiva – Paul Hawkins – Keith Ford – Joseph Ridgwell – Dhiyanah Hassan – C. R. Resetarits – Rob True – Sophie Pitchford – Jamie Thrasivoulou – Martin Appleby – Liz Zumin – Siddharth Dasgupta – Ben Williams – Caitlin Meredith – Adam Steiner – Jim Gibson – V.M. – Fredric Nord – Mark Goodwin – Hiromi Suzuki – Trevor Wright – Howie Good
The Arsonist Magazine Edition 01 is a 92 page full colour/b&w matt/gloss perfect-bound A5 magazine (this is a limited edition and, being the inaugural print publication from Burning House Press, is sure to be a collectible item)
The Arsonist Magazine Edition 01 – available to purchase here
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