God walks through us on lonely nights — Nome Patrick
before i name myself an island in bed,
far from shore, i carve my life inside a poem.
a letter in a bottle is how i commune with God,
walk him round the ruins of my heart,
have him wear this skin that has contained screams.
most times, i am a roadsign cars ignore, Continue reading ““You Are The One God Forgot” by Michael Akuchie, and “Of Perception” by Casimir Wojciech”
In the shop of chimes and mysteries we chose the waving cat.
Maneki Neko—perfect, white plastic,
trimmed with gold and red, one paw raised to the sky.
On our kitchen windowsill, it sat—ushering
good luck in, bad luck out. So we believed.
It ticked like a clock as it waved, only,
it never made it right through a whole night—
slowing to a halt a few hours after sunset. Continue reading “Wishing to Believe by F. E. Clark”
asake, pray for me.
i am your father’s grandfather,
you do not know me,
but you are the lines on my palms.
pray for me! pray for me!
those on earth pray for those in heaven
so those in heaven could set their passage.
pray for me, asake;
pray for my peace! Continue reading “Irapada(redemption) – Aremu Adams Adebisi”
During your Palm Springs summer,
your off-white apartment walls curved
around you like an elegant shell
pulled together tight by the bit of meat inside.
Eventually any distraction seemed a blessing.
Sometimes you appeared able to conjure
up some sound or other outside,
but never the one you wanted. Continue reading “The Ocean’s Only Word, Getting Light, and Near Disaster – Lee Potts”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome BOLA OPALEKE as our JANUARY 2019 guest editor! As of today Bola will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of January.
Submissions for Bola are open from today – 1st January and will remain open until 24th January. Continue reading “January 2019 Guest Editor Is BOLA OPALEKE!!! Theme/s: FAITH // FAITHLESSNESS // DIVINITY”
Aaand that’s a wrap! Burning House Press would like to thank October’s Guest Editors SHE SPEAKS UK for selecting, curating and presenting an INCREDIBLE array of writing and art on the theme/s GENDER & REVOLUTION – and for all of the endeavour and hard work that has gone into managing the month – THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, EMERCIANA, AOIFE, & JO!!!
Massive thank you also goes to everyone who contributed to the theme/s 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 GENDER & REVOLUTION EDITION – every selection in one place for you to read/peruse – enjoy!!! xX Continue reading “GENDER & REVOLUTION EDITION – SELECTED/CURATED/PRESENTED BY OCTOBER 2018 GUEST EDITORS SHE SPEAKS UK”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome SHE SPEAKS UK as our October guest editors!!! As of today She Speaks will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of October.
Submissions for She Speaks are open from today – 1st October and will remain open until 24th.
She Speaks Theme/s for the month are as follows
She Speaks have introduced their theme/s for your guidance:
Gender & Revolution
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
Audre Lorde
“No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution… Revolution is but thought carried into action.”
Emma Goldman (Writer and Anarchist)
What does gender look like to you? If gender is a construct, how would you deconstruct it? If you could re-write or reframe gender norms, would you? What would your world look like? What changes, if any, would you like to see?
What does revolution look like? Why is it important and what changes are needed?
We want you to use words or images to investigate gender, revolution, or both. You could draw on personal experiences, historical / her-storical narratives, imagined environments or cultural commentary. We welcome voices that represent different worldviews, beliefs and geographical locations.
We want art that breaks rules; that challenges patriarchy; that expresses personal struggle; that exposes the impact of cultural norms. Don’t be afraid to break out of your comfort zone and push the boundaries.
We can’t wait to see your submissions.
Love,
She Speaks
x
Continue reading “October 2018 Guest Editor/s are SHE SPEAKS UK!!! Theme/s: GENDER & REVOLUTION”
I am not from here. I am from somewhere in between push and pull. I am a thrust not yet experienced by what people usually call ‘home’. I am exiled. I am exile. I reside not in my consciousness, but in the lingering smell of last night’s cigarettes and rain drops. In the burning of pages. In the hunger for belonging, which I feed with matches, flames, and the ashes of what were once my journals, my essays on the flesh of the world, my notebooks, my manuscripts, my resolutions, my shopping lists, my thoughts on the nightstand. Exile. Soft, felt in my hands. Felt in yours. Grasping its shape, fingering its texture, sensing its temperature. Exile, mingled with memorabilia and all the angers of the world. I live with it as one lives with a strong sense of physical presence, something to cling to until I get better. Something to keep me going. Being a gesture, becoming an extension of its flesh. That’s what exile is to me. A grave. Luscious. Infinite. Sarcophagus of blessed souls. I am pulling you into the depths of it. Exile, exceptional euphemism. Continue reading “Exile, intensive care by Christina Tudor-Sideri”
Rewinds
Peel open and peek:
inside the flapping, lolling mouth
of our mother’s photo album.
laminated with a sticky-wash skin
in grainy, colour-locked glamours.
encircled as we are, backlit and gypsy-like,
upon the retina of her old kodak.
Leaf through and look:
at our mother’s postgrad bungalow,
and the cats she found and raised alone.
and here, in burnout red, our ex-brothers,
with their lucid, low alley guitars.
and these polaroids of nameless children,
in some backyard mummery we long forgot.
Browse, then burrow:
deep into this picture house novel,
framed by weddings. birthdays. sleepovers.
reunions. divorces. second-hand toyotas.
painted kitchens. political borders. the first dog we ever got.
Then her final photo. Book ends.
Snap shut.
The film roll clicks.
And our lives rewind again.
1. There is nothing soft in the universes.
2. There wasn’t at the start, certainly, unless you count the unexpected wobble that got us going to be some sort of expression of care from a creator we will never see nor hear from ever again.
3. All the energy unleashed becoming skids of hot gas becoming swirls of hot rock having what we will later describe as celestial pub fights, no there is no softness there. Continue reading “Softness as a cosmology by Rishi Dastidar”
Henceforth, every line and every color of Picasso will exude the spirit of this rough land; will have the savor of dried figs or of cracked olives, the vigor of the olive shoot, the light of an almond tree in flower, the perfume of a sprig of lavender. And in St Petersburg and New York, in Barcelona, in Paris, in Berlin… they will collect and admire beautiful fragments of this enamored gaze. —Angel Querol, son of the mayor of Horta Sant Joan
Continue reading “By the Water’s Edge by Susanna Crossman”
Icy evening, drunk but not too drunk,
a blur of lights round Hollingworth, where blue
unhappy boats skim the winter lake.
Your breath gleams up the window of your
unkempt Volvo estate, the dark red hulk,
snug vessel which covered our childhood miles,
expanses doled out in weekend tropes:
car-boot sales, bacon-sausage-egg,
scalds of tea in Styrofoam and
fish fried in brown batter. Continue reading “Familiar Road by Daniel Fraser”
Mother
The air at 4:30 is cool and lightless, the Moon is waning gibbous, low in the south in Capricornus, and in the southwest, Jupiter is descending in Ophiuchus. And Mother came to see the tiger lilies yesterday, they are blooming beside the pond, marking the farm’s July. Continue reading “The farm will have us always by Richard Winters”
August
August is second-degree burns / from hands grazing against metal / it is waking from sweat-dripping nightmares / and no more room for intimacy / August is a silent scarring / a tension you can taste / stinking rotten in the air / it is a dozen new bruises / peppering my limbs every morning / how my mother wished she could see / a little more color in me / so I show her my arms / my legs / my neck / I beg her, make him leave / please / I won’t come home unless he’s gone / her smile is thin but gorilla glued / she says, I’m just so tired of fighting / can’t we pretend a little more instead? / I board myself up forty miles east / I eat this fake-happy like smoke-staining fruit / soft hair after downpour / and dreams of scissor-stabs tucked neat between my ribs / my brother no longer speaking to me / and forgetting to wake up tomorrow / it’s rush hour in hell / a car swerves to miss me / driver screaming, watch where you’re going / are you trying to die? / I look back at him, doe-like / his honks still blaring in my ears / I have nothing to say.
I am a sample of millions, billions. I am this sample soaking in these vivid visions and complexities of minds lost at sea. These eyes gaze long and absent mindedly at nothing, and for moments on end, realize that everything is familiar and alien at once. These eyes, tormented by meaninglessness, seek that which they know not. What the hell are we doing here? Who are all these beings floating through these spaces? Once upon a hazy memory, home was a shape-shifting mask bent out of proportion. Once upon a memory blooming, home was the love of life, the love of this life. Continue reading “Strangers in Strange Spaces by Mercy Ananeh-Frempong”
We were in Paris, there was never enough money, and everything was expensive. I didn’t have much French then, but it was enough to get by, or I thought it was. Dorothy didn’t have any French at all, and from the outset she said that she wasn’t going to learn how to say anything beyond Oui. She was American, and I loved her, or I thought I did, then. Continue reading “Learning French in Paris by Damian Kelleher”
My clothes smelled of fried food — a stench without a clear origin. And the lights of the boulevard stabbed my eyes, bouncing off the glass in Pig’s taxi — the windows, the mirrors. Lights and the stench of fried food.
“I missed that…” I said.
“I asked if you tried virtual sex,” repeated Diego. Continue reading “To Return by Fernando Sdrigotti”
Disjecta
A face glimpsed as if framed through a space between the lattice-work of a bench, a day-drinking bar on a shade-lined street of turn-of-the-century buildings, Mediterranean maybe, looking for what, lower lip pinned to upper, unsure, a question: a face glimpsed as if framed through a space between the lattice-work of a bench upon which one word was seen: nostalgie.
But back at the beginning: the station was blue. His face a ruin. Rain.
Someone had disappeared. Continue reading “Disjecta – Caesura – Membra, from ‘& The Little Light That Escaped (Vedute)’, by Alexander Booth”
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