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DECEMBER 2025 Guest Editor Is MATTHEW KINLIN!!! Theme: My Heart Is Empty: Responses to The Life and Work of Nico

Burning House Press are excited to welcome Matthew Kinlin as the fifth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today Matt will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of December.

Submissions are open from today 1st December – and will remain open until 21st DECEMBER.

Matt’s theme for the month is as follows

My Heart Is Empty: Responses to The Life and Work of Nico

Matthew Kinlin lives and writes in Glasgow. His published workst include Teenage Hallucination (Orbis Tertius Press, 2021); Curse Red, Curse Blue, Curse Green (Sweat Drenched Press, 2021); The Glass Abattoir (D.F.L. Lit, 2023); Songs of Xanthina (Broken Sleep Books, 2023); Psycho Viridian (Broken Sleep Books, 2024) and So Tender a Killer (Filthy Loot, 2025). Instagram: @obscene_mirror.

——

Submission Guidelines

All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com

Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: NICO/POETRY

Poetry and Fiction

For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Art
Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Virtual Reality/ 3D Artworks

For VR Submissions, please submit no more than three (3) individual artworks. For Tilt Brush works, please upload your artwork to Google Poly (https://poly.google.com/), and mark it as ‘public’ (‘remixable’ is at your own preference). A VR/3D artwork can also be submitted as a video export navigating through the artwork. If you prefer this method, please upload your finished video file to YouTube or Vimeo and provide a URL. With either format, please provide a 150 word artist’s statement.

Non-fiction
Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.

Submissions are open until 21st December – and will reopen again on 1st January 2026/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Matthew Kinlin – friends, arsonistas, send our December 2025 guest editor your magic!

Unwell by David Rodríguez

over seventy windblown years
tied to the mast, patience has eluded me
leaving me to hum along the shrillest
siren call in grating irritation
struggling to find or develop
a minimal measure of discernment
to catch my breath, one breath
between the healing itch the mending pain
and the vicious nag of wounding aches
might say my suspicious mind
dove for a dark, silty bottom
and found the drain unclogging gratitude
or trust to sluice and flush a pressured dram
of bittersweet relief

. . .

David Rodriguez is a 71-year-old prodigal son trapped in a Ground Hog Day loop. The thought that all the scribblings of my circuitous, rambling life will either end up in the dumpster or belong to a posterity I will never see has been keeping me up at night lately.

The Long Game by Kyla Houbolt

Cutting locust tree saplings
to feed to the sheep who
blatt impatiently. A locust grove
has started and it must be stopped.
Locust has thorns and is good
for little except feeding goats
and sheep. Although I’m sure
the land has a different opinion.
But the land does not have
a vote, so cut
the saplings
will be.

The cost of the coast is the loss
of honest sand, which was host
to myriad lives we’ve failed
to understand. Now there are
daily sweeps of machines
to scrape the bought sand smooth.
You may find old cups or leftover
snack bags there, because shells
are crushed by the beach sweeper
and these shells all came, once,
from another beach from whence
this sand was harvested.

Let’s go to the beach. Look. Here
there are thorns and thistles. All
the things to hurt your tender feet.
Thistles wave their brave purple flags
above their fierce foliage but it does
them no good, cut they will be. Wear
your rose gauntlets when you go
into that field, and boots. The beach
is friendlier, having been made so
by voted decree. The sand is very
hot, however, as no vote has learned
to cool it. No vote could, though
some still believe.

Slip into the water, still a bit cool.
Out there are creatures who
would like your friendship, and others
who care for nothing but their
next meal. Sometimes they are
the same. We might recognize
ourselves there too in the water
when it’s calm. We’ve not yet
drowned nor learned to breathe
in the deep. What do we need
to learn? I often wonder, or if
it is possible at all, to learn,
to breathe.

. . .

Kyla Houbolt is a poet and gardener living in North Carolina. Her first full length poetry collection, Becoming Altar, from Subpress.

https://asterismbooks.com/product/becoming-altar-new-and-selected-poems

https://kylahoubolt.us/

NOVEMBER 2025 Guest Editor Is C.C. O’HANLON!!! THEME/S: JOURNEYS

Burning House Press are excited to welcome C.C. O’HANLON as the fifth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today C.C. will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of November.

Submissions are open from today 1st November – and will remain open until 25TH November.

C.C.’s theme for the month is as follows

—JOURNEYS

~~~

JOURNEYS: Physical, Psychological, and Imaginary, embracing words and images, in all forms, as well as complexity, resisting the superficial, algorithmic narratives of social media.

~~~

Photo by Given Rozell.

~~~

A self-described ‘vagabond, diarist, and wreck’, C.C. O’Hanlon’s fragmentary memoirs have been published in various anthologies, including Best Australian Essays 2005 and Best Australian Stories 2004 (both published by Black Inc, Australia), A Revealed Life: Australian Writers And Their Journeys In Memoir (ABC Books, Australia), The Odysseum: Strange Journeys That Obliterated Convention (John Murray, U.K.), Zahir: Desire & Eclipse (Zeno Press, U.K.), and Dark Ocean (Dark Mountain Project, U.K.). A founding features editor of Harper’ Bazaar Australia in the late ’80s, his mainstream journalism and images have appeared in The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Variety, Travel & Leisure, the Australian editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and scores of other newspapers and magazines.

He now lives a nomadic life with his American wife of 38 years aboard a small, sea-worn old sailboat named Wrack in the southern Mediterranean. They have three adult children.

_______

Submission Guidelines

All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com

Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: JOURNEYS/POETRY

Poetry and Fiction

For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Art
Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Virtual Reality/ 3D Artworks

For VR Submissions, please submit no more than three (3) individual artworks. For Tilt Brush works, please upload your artwork to Google Poly (https://poly.google.com/), and mark it as ‘public’ (‘remixable’ is at your own preference). A VR/3D artwork can also be submitted as a video export navigating through the artwork. If you prefer this method, please upload your finished video file to YouTube or Vimeo and provide a URL. With either format, please provide a 150 word artist’s statement.

Non-fiction
Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.

Submissions are open until 25th November – and will reopen again on 1st DECEMBER 2025/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing C.C. – friends, arsonistas, send our NOVEMBER 2025 guest editor your magic!

Three poems by Jordan Davis

Interrogator needed
must fail to understand
the simplest things
in a vault of goo —

Platitudes generated
by electricity
falling into a source
it troubles us to consider
even once,

whispering to solvent after solvent —

is this the visual
you redirect your password from,
are there other kinds
of sympathy you act
out about?

Do you inventory
your playing cards
routinely.

What I’m telling you
is none of your business
and business is good.

*
The book of
how’s that going to work:

Like aliens,
their flitting pincers
storming across the stacks.

Supervision for the loneliest,
and architecture
made of composure and
lidocaine.

There is this long waiting period
before it makes sense to talk.

It’s fine that you want
a reservoir of tenderness,
but you should know
it comes with conditions
your character
tends to oppose.

*
A chaos familiar enough
I experience it as valuable,
clinging sideways
into its reason

and misread the story
the way anyone would
from underneath the letters.

Giving down its lesson,
the fear electrifies
a plateau for breathing
the sour lonely soup,

a glittering cassette
blowing in the brisk
aftermath.

Sympathy we dissolve
is nevertheless available
later for unknown newcomers

with even a dime —
in this system
wanting both
is rubble roulette, sweetie.

You have to be that slippery
and no more.

Come on, already,
it’s unbearable how you
refuse
this dialogue without borders,

these dependable changes
while the world considers
what it really wants,
the drift of feeling
in a crisis —

After the earthquake
the ceiling leaks,
the layered presence
parted like a bead curtain …

Not, more light:
Lighter.
Lighter.

Jordan Davis is a former Poetry Editor of The Nation. His most recent collection
is Yeah, No (MadHat, 2023). Bluesky @jordandavis.bsky.social

SEPTEMBER 2025 Guest Editor Is Alexander Booth!!! THEME/S: LANDSCAPE // LABYRINTH

Burning House Press are excited to welcome Alexander Booth as the fourth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today Alexander will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of September.

Submissions are open from today 1st September – and will remain open until 25TH SEPTEMBER.

Alexander’s theme/s for the month are as follows

—LANDSCAPE

LABYRINTH—

Black Square and Red Square by Kazmir Malevich

_____

LANDSCAPE // LABYRINTH

*

When the painter’s friends, however, looked around for the painter, they saw that he was gone—that he was in the picture. There, he followed the little path that led to the door, paused before it quite still, turned, smiled, and disappeared through the narrow opening. 

–        Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900 (trans. Howard Eiland)

*

Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows. 

           Gaston Bachelard (trans. Maria Jolas)

*

“Though Minos blocks escape by land or water,”

Daedalus said, “surely the sky is open,

And that’s the way we’ll go. Minos’ dominion

Does not include the air.”

–        Ovid, Metamorphosis (trans. Rolfe Humphries)

_____

Alexander Booth is a poet, translator, collage artist and printmaker who lives in Berlin. Recent translations include books by Friederike Mayröcker, Alexander Kluge, Gerhard Rühm, and a new translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His collection of poems Triptych was published in 2021 and Kantor in 2023.

__________

Submission Guidelines

All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com

Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: LANDSCAPE/POETRY Or LABYRINTH/FICTION

Poetry and Fiction

For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Art
Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Virtual Reality/ 3D Artworks

For VR Submissions, please submit no more than three (3) individual artworks. For Tilt Brush works, please upload your artwork to Google Poly (https://poly.google.com/), and mark it as ‘public’ (‘remixable’ is at your own preference). A VR/3D artwork can also be submitted as a video export navigating through the artwork. If you prefer this method, please upload your finished video file to YouTube or Vimeo and provide a URL. With either format, please provide a 150 word artist’s statement.

Non-fiction
Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.

Submissions are open until 25th SEPTEMBER – and will reopen again on 1st OCTOBER 2025/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Alexander Booth – friends, arsonistas, send our SEPTEMBER 2025 guest editor your magic!

JULY 2025 Guest Editor Is M. Forajter!!! THEME: ART & ANNIHILATION: contemporary gothic writing in the Anthropocene

Burning House Press are excited to welcome M. FORAJTER as the second BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today M. will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of JULY.

Submissions are open from today – and will remain open until 25TH JULY.

M.’s theme for the month is as follows

—ART & ANNIHILATION: contemporary gothic writing in the Anthropocene—

ART & ANNIHILATION: contemporary gothic writing in the Anthropocene

“The energy of the poem penetrates and re-penetrates the rotting native land with ghosts, junk, corpses, skin, denigrating terms, and denigrated materials in order to engender a counternativity, an occult rebirth as ghostly reanimation. In this way the poet incestually forces his own rebirth, not as a liberated man but as a kind of infernal, spectral double, a production of the text: “And behold here I am!” -Joyelle McSweeney, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults

BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR! + microplastics + dandelion +  flawed pearl + fruit punch + The Relic + baroque + “when does a meadow stop being a meadow” + jackalope + bowl of teeth + i am sad, so sad + a ceaseless keening + still skeptical + lilac + Lizzie Borden took an axe + Joan of Arc : : Gilles De Rais + “search at the dump concluded today with” + tiger pelts + je me lance + the biologist + dense + decadent + nonpotable + “ob-scene[…] their filthy beauty” + disposable + “the pastoral, like the occult, has always been a fraud” + heavy water + contamination readouts + bonsai tree + shotgun +  “no conclusive evidence of substantial impact on wildlife” +  wild boar + many wolves + pine + “life finds a way!” + slight asymmetric measurements + “don’t drink milk or eat tomatoes” + MELODY,   GLOUCESTER + sunflower  remediation +  fortitude + end of the world + gross body + ecological anxiety +  HUMANS,         HUMANS,         HUMANS.

Contemporary ecological concerns are often countered with talk about environmental justice.  What does justice mean to a corpse? I’ve read too many books where hapless environmentalist do-gooders try to sell me the silver lining in mass extinction and planetary collapse. Some people are very excited about the possibilities in fungus. Some people are vegetarians. Some people make art. Autoerotic asphyxiation takes many forms.

Send me decadent poetry peddling vegetal, venial filth; fiction that is more sensation than sense; writing with mutated romantic hearts; visual art both florid and tortured. Send me your most purple perfume reviews & pimple pops, your psycho killer love letters, your apocalypse day planner. Tell me what credit cards you ate for lunch yesterday; your most recent sperm count. I want a lush gothic novel written by a half-imploded billionaire at the bottom of the sea; I want Melancholia & Flannery O’Connor & Lara Glenum & Only Lovers Left Alive.

Good luck.

____________

M. Forajter is the author of Interrogating the Eye (Schism Neurotics, 2022), a poetry-essay on the poetics of looking/the gaze and the ecstasy of art making. Her work focuses on experimental poetics, the gothic, and the effects of the Anthropocene on non-human ecology. She really likes Nirvana, werewolves, and medieval art.

__________

Submission Guidelines

All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com

Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: ART & ANNIHILATION/POETRY

Poetry and Fiction

For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Art
Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Virtual Reality/ 3D Artworks

For VR Submissions, please submit no more than three (3) individual artworks. For Tilt Brush works, please upload your artwork to Google Poly (https://poly.google.com/), and mark it as ‘public’ (‘remixable’ is at your own preference). A VR/3D artwork can also be submitted as a video export navigating through the artwork. If you prefer this method, please upload your finished video file to YouTube or Vimeo and provide a URL. With either format, please provide a 150 word artist’s statement.

Non-fiction
Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.

Submissions are open until 25th JULY – and will reopen again on 1st AUGUST 2025/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing M. FORAJTER– friends, arsonistas, send our JULY 2025 guest editor your magic!

JUNE 2025 Guest Editor Is JOHN TREFRY!!! THEME: INANIMISM

Burning House Press are excited to welcome JOHN TREFRY as the first BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today JOHN will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of JUNE.

Submissions are open from today – and will remain open until 25TH JUNE.

JOHN’S theme for the month is as follows

—INANIMISM—

Submission Guidelines

All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com

Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: INANIMISM/POETRY

Poetry and Fiction

For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Art
Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Virtual Reality/ 3D Artworks

For VR Submissions, please submit no more than three (3) individual artworks. For Tilt Brush works, please upload your artwork to Google Poly (https://poly.google.com/), and mark it as ‘public’ (‘remixable’ is at your own preference). A VR/3D artwork can also be submitted as a video export navigating through the artwork. If you prefer this method, please upload your finished video file to YouTube or Vimeo and provide a URL. With either format, please provide a 150 word artist’s statement.

Non-fiction
Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.

Submissions are open until 25th JUNE – and will reopen again on 1st JULY2025/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing JOHN TREFRY – friends, arsonistas, send our JUNE 2025 guest editor your magic!

Womannotated – Pretty Maids All In A Row

Pretty Maids All In A Row

after Servant

Rambles past ringlets, ruffles, rouge to you, 
end of the queue, interviewed for the show,
television lady forgets your debut —
segment you are someone she chose to know.

Her fascinations are fleeting and slight,
provincially dressed princess one night.  Lives
she catalogues on oak shelves in plain sight. 
Decades of ingenues in her archives,

Continue reading “Womannotated – Pretty Maids All In A Row” →

Womannotated – The Dirty Truth About Butterflies

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” →

Womannotated – Macabre Burlesque

November 14th, 2020

Macabre Burlesque 

I live in a genre the aged read.
Decrepit men tell their mendacities 
before a final tomcatnap beneath 
cracked granite mausoleum roof.  This squeezed 
social register, not quite weatherproof,
trickles on nipples; a drooping sundress
exposes flesh, rose, only ghosts reprove 
or molest, witness this macabre burlesque.

Continue reading “Womannotated – Macabre Burlesque” →

Womannotated – Holding Pond

October 7, 2020

Holding Pond


Kristin Garth

Gills desiccating, you glide through his house,

hair towel dried, Oxford shirt, slouched, secured 

with belt made oversized dress — yours doused

in his tank, under duress. Damp, demure

while you saunter down bifurcated stairs,

some guests the servants were unaware, out

his front door then driveway, street. Unprepared —

Continue reading “Womannotated – Holding Pond” →

Womannotated-Girlarium

Two Girlarium sonnets:

Continue reading “Womannotated-Girlarium” →

Womannotated – Death In The Air

August 16th, 2020

(Content warning:  horror, death, suicide, some discussion of Midsommar with what could be considered general, mild spoilers)

Death In The Air

A scent in twilight past breaths of the beast 

who stalks the edges of forests on the 

phalanges of feet, quickening heartbeats 

of little lost girls, panting in pine trees 

near the end of the world.  Pale hirsute ear 

you peer where the needles are bare.  Eyes straight 

ahead, mutter pieces of prayers.  Fear 

Continue reading “Womannotated – Death In The Air” →

3 Poems from Fatal Error by Mark Amerika

Toward A Philosophy of Photography

Last night I dreamt
I was turning real life
into an autohallucinatory dream
within a dream Continue reading “3 Poems from Fatal Error by Mark Amerika” →

Bright Blue While the Juice is Flowing by Bobbi Lurie

Bright Blue While The Juice Is Flowing

a piece of
bitterness
transformed

separation
of
my face Continue reading “Bright Blue While the Juice is Flowing by Bobbi Lurie” →

Ways of Seeing by Elodie Barnes

Ways of Seeing

Your eyes see things upside down; it’s down to your brain to turn them the other way up. This has become known as the right way up.

My eyes see things upside down, but my brain doesn’t work like yours. Continue reading “Ways of Seeing by Elodie Barnes” →

2 Poems by Jocelyn Deane

Spirit Photography
after William H.Mumler

In this photo
Abraham Lincoln lies
in superposition
over Mary Todd’s veil and Continue reading “2 Poems by Jocelyn Deane” →

The Wise Master by Chariklia Martalas

1.

Have we been blinded by reality?

Asked the Wise Master

The violence of a reality that sends tremors down the nerves 

To spark and catch alight.

Our eyes on fire. Continue reading “The Wise Master by Chariklia Martalas” →

2 Poems by Phu-Linh Tran

No Longer Believe

What do I SE E? //

Why do I have V IS IO N /

if I no longer believe /

what my MI ND /

puts before me? // Continue reading “2 Poems by Phu-Linh Tran” →

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