Get lost,
Less human than me,
I’ll go to sleep,
In thousands of movements,
Under the eyes of heaven,
Amounts to devils I can’t see,
I could pray,
For a life more humane,
I should cry,
Hands stained with sin,
And get on running,
To the East, Continue reading “2 Poems & 2 Flash Fictions by Aina Izzah”
Carl sat there, on the sofa, mesmerised by the sound of magpies. Their clicking calls like rattle clackers at a football match in the old days. He watched them swoop and dive, attacking the screaming songbirds, relentless egg raids one after another. Thieving and hunting, blue, black and white blurs. That clicking noise, against the midday silence, soothed him into magic trance. Turning his attention back to the TV playing an episode of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, he grinned at Frank annoying some poor bastard in a shop. But as Frank nervously caused another calamity, something went wrong with the telly. The screen didn’t look right. Carl focused, squinting and, as the soft fuzz sharpened, he realised he was looking at the skirting in a corner of the room. Continue reading “3 Stories by Rob True”
The half-suns laid in brick —
tan curves on a red face —
close in on each other
but never touch.
They will not come together
to brighten the sky.
They will not kiss your face
with rays of light.
The Arsonist Magazine edition 01 – featuring flammable materials from 30 international writers artists photographers – Coming Soon
selling points include “fairly good shape”
liberal politics a breezy concept of god
checklists presenting
banged-up circles for easy handling
into this desperate mechanics turns
the gears of hard consonants
hikes, bikes, kayaks, walks
toils of past-time that toll hollow
now you want a goddess to flame
on one immune to the sting of obsession
She stops to light a fag, watches some sparrows fight over batter-bits, left by a slow-blown chip-paper that tumbleweeds across the Courthouse grass.
From the pavement she squints to make out the headline exclaiming Sandie Shaw a winner.
She drags deep on her fag, exhales, puts both hands back on the pram and starts walking, steering around a curled mound of dog muck.
Jean and her sisters watched the Eurovision on their new second-hand black and white TV on Saturday night, bought by her mam the weekend before from a woman at work.
Jean and her sisters gasped when Sandie’s microphone didn’t work at first, and then moved as one to the edge of the new second-hand settee when Sandie’s voice came through loud and clear.
Jean would like her hair cut like Sandie’s, but for now she wears it in a beehive.
She stoops by the cenotaph to pull the backs of her sandals up, and to stop her heart beating fast she sings the first line of Sandie’s chorus, almost breathing it into the mouth of the pram.
Say you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there.
She frowns, drags on her fag, then starts reading the blackened names on the cenotaph.
For those who fell.
She gets as far as Evans G, then understands these names mean nothing to her, and placing one hand on the pram, she moves on in slow measured steps, fag in mouth, using her free hand to check her hair.
In the mirror this morning she thought she looked older. This is something she wants, and has been practising an older face. The older face doesn’t smile.
She takes her fag out and glances down to her belly and legs as she walks. In her brown suede miniskirt her belly has lost its little pudding, and she thinks her legs have gained nothing after the birth.
In the distance, the Post Office clock looks like it reads a quarter to one, but she can’t be sure without her glasses.
Jean puts the brake on the big old pram and moves around to the side of it, peering into the flaky chrome struts that hold the hood up. Her black eyeliner is thick today, and her slate-grey eyes stare back between curls of peeling silver.
She rubs the loose flakes off and wishes she had a new pram.
When the woman from the Social came to tell her someone had donated a used pram and did she want it, Jean felt happy. She walked all the way across town to a big old house to collect it. The woman who was donating the pram smiled at Jean, but she could tell the woman was judging her.
Jean’s mam warned her people would be like this when she came home with the baby.
Jean knew this anyway.
Lifting the brake with the toe of her sandal, Jean and the pram move off slowly. She still has quarter of an hour until she meets Mick, and Mick is always late.
Her heart starts beating faster again when she thinks of him, and she hates herself for not being strong and calm like an older woman would.
She parks the pram by the bench and sits down, pulling her skirt down lower.
Stamping her fag out, she remembers Mick’s face when she told him she was pregnant. She remembers the flicker of shock in his eyes, the blink, then the grin, the Oh well I suppose we’d best get married then.
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.
Thank you, Alexis, for submitting your works to be featured on Burning House Press! You mentioned in our email exchange that you don’t work in themes or projects, rather that the images arise in their own time – the same goes for the works’ titles. Is chance a huge factor in your photographic process?
Thank you, it’s my pleasure!
It depends what you mean by “chance”, if you mean events that happen by forces that are beyond the control of the individual consciousness then yes, chance is very important. My practice is deeply connected with this surrendering to the flow of life; this is why I mostly conceive photographs as happenings rather than doings. Today I wrote this small note which feels relevant to this question: Creativity is not a doing, it is an alignment with the cosmic unfolding, in which there is no separate doer. Continue reading “‘Variations of Presence’ – an interview with photographer Alexis Vasilikos”
A woman learns when she is young
That all of her is a weapon
Against a world that is determined
To mould her softness into something
Convenient, hard, eventually,
a disappearance.
I
Sovereign fires
Crane their necks thin
Hovering upon faultless feet
Weary scythes drop eaves
Overlook brothers of sleep,
Taking age to the face of day
Above brilliant margins
Drowsing sentinels
Illuminate the mainstream Continue reading “‘Look Up’ by Adam Steiner”
1
Weeping woman, look up here.
It seems a beautiful day.
Ovals lay eggs. We have flowers.
Even a simple call can turn into a racket,
self-reflection in bright yellow.
2
You are different now.
But not bad different.
Just, you know, not like 1999.
Go die, come back, I’ll love you.
Love will save us, love will save us.
Violet hearts run crimson tides. Continue reading “5 Assemblages by Howie Good”
red-tailed hawk, I unfurl
my Refrains,
flexing towards the bend in the shadow
crouched,
my beak
I grip, taste iron in my talons (trap set low)
my four offenses lining up the prey Continue reading “3 Poems by Cindy Savett”
i light a quick cig & have a seat while the rain slowly sets in. a woman begins citing the new words of her god,
the new sunken scripture:
“it’s a new age on planet earth!” before pacing her step & clapping her hands “it’s the eighth day! june tenth, twenty-sixteen. june tenth, twenty-sixteen. i grew up in…”
then she vanishes. Continue reading “‘Until Tomorrow’ by Jordan Lucien Pansky”
I stand tall
like the charred silhouette
of a tree that has lasted
through fire, and
I long for the burn of youth. Continue reading “4 Poems by Beate Sigriddaughter”
My heart died inside
my chest last night
I said my goodbyes
while I carved
its initials in a tree.
I buried the remnants
in a hole
deeper than my regret. Continue reading “3 Poems by Adam Levon Brown”
If I present myself to them
What of their measurement and their avoidance?
It is a survival, a learning to live
A pellicle thin as skin on black tea.
Few poets don’t wear the mask. Continue reading “‘Five-Fold Symmetries’ by Liz Zumin”
It must have been around Summer 2013. I had just had my first collection of poems published. It was the culmination of many years of continuous writing. A searing, intense, daily practice of generating language. I had begun writing in the first instance as a means to save my life, and now I had no room left to contain the word. I was emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted.
It was around this period that I discovered the poetry of Cindy Savett. Continue reading “We Disturb The Air – an interview with Cindy Savett”
It was not so much the murder
and amount of body’s there
but the scale of the mutilation
and torture that took place
before the point of death
had actually occurred. Continue reading “2 Poems by Paul Tristram”
1. ‘a sigh, a sorrow, a suspicious mind’
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 