Responding to bubble threat.
Vehicle loaded.
Strapped beneath plates.
Moving out.
Location verification required.
East on… static zzzzzzzz
Repeat. Command. Repeat. zzzzzzzzz
East on… static zzz
Cavalry to command: Continue reading “Divine Intervention – Elancharan Gunasekaran”
Churchgoers scan
my microchip;
they ask
if I’m lost,
if I’m a sheep astray.
They point towards your temple—
the one I’m running from.
I tread away Continue reading “Lost Sheep – Jeremy Mifsud”
imperfect, a perfect image for me.
humbled by its mistakes.
my god is a mistake.
a wrong answer,
differently abled.
its winters often in spring.
its summers sometime in autumn. Continue reading “my god is – Paul Brookes”
Needles are helpful
In identifying can#$@
As well evilicious
Thoughts I have
Like my husband
Doesn’t love me
He won’t have my baby
Like God is temporary
When I need him Continue reading “One More Lamb, No! This Is The Way It Starts, and Baptism Gone Awry – Elisabeth Horan”
Sister sings contrition, ripe to believe
in prophet palms, fey fingers. Submission
to a Patriarch plunge— yield and receive.
White out winter, naked lips and eyes. Leave
past sorrows traded for superstition.
Sister sings contrition, ripe to believe. Continue reading “The Baptism – Juliette van der Molen”
Again, the man in the window
wakes from a dream of June bugs:
fragile with heat, they’d thrown
their bodies into trees and split
like skulls. The man said he was
hungry. The sisters still arrive
some evenings with their Bibles
and a roll of toilet paper. Continue reading “Purgatorio, East Peoria – Todd Smith”
If I try to sing from the silence thoughts of G-d come out sometimes
but I have never
worshipped and meant it.
Nobody has dared ask me to.
I’ve sung higher powers, let strangers
lick the metallic holy off the air around me,
it is sanctifying to make
a space for the devout to cry into,
but I have never
meant. Once down the pub Continue reading “Fearsong – Anna Kahn”
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”
Vomiting in a cubicle space was definitely unpalatable and embarrassing. It was a repeated incident, despite the last projection occurring eight months ago. My boss remembered, so when I waddled up to her in my pencil skirt and tights, unaware that I would be moaning, convulsing, and caught under covers a week earlier than expected (and not on a fortunate weekend, mind you), she nodded for me to go, reminding me, “You’ve got sick leave.” Continue reading “Forever, The Little Girl – Kristine Brown”
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”
Every Hour Hurts in Fall
By now, you have adjusted to time’s addition, waking
without alarm, your body’s sudden jolt of electricity—
your toes and fingers wiggle—eyelids flip open to stare
at the ceiling’s cold. You’re still here. Isn’t that crazy?
You want to get moving before you hold still, before
you find yourself between the flight of day & dream.
on being broken / like shards of withered glass / my body
repels every music its soul makes / i close every door i
can’t walk back through / by this i mean i keep memories
in a box of cigar / god tells me i am a chapel Continue reading “Adedayo Agarau: 3 poems”
The grass lies hungry, waiting
to swallow up water, worms,
seeds.
I scatter them. One by one
they are plunged into the
dampened fingers of fertile
earth,
The door opens to a married man, a single bed.
You’re not here, but your presence is everywhere. The bed is meticulous, signs you’ve been here are subtle, imagined, your outline dimpling the duvet, just a trace; Continue reading “Ben Gedaliah: Room 168, the Hotel S-“
Strange goings on today televisions walk in and out the door pills spew from the cat’s mouth
here take your medicine fox at the door yip yips pit bull chews a piece of Wonder Bread the skull
of a boar on the table the boy reaches through a hole in his bathroom floor the door is open the
window is open Continue reading “Rebecca Loudon: Portal”
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