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Poems by Simon Ravenscroft

Lemon dose

Sniff your blues away

in the electric evening light

Burst gold all over the sky again

like every other night of late

There’s not much 

music in it left

Give me a sky of muted grey 

& distant television noise

Say to me again you love me

or did before you lost me

Beneath the crescent moon

by the jetty

When the clouds blocked 

the sun & other stars from view

Before it rained,

we were surrounded by little plastic cups of red wine. After the rain stopped, we gathered our things and ran. The fundamentals of lived experience are such that one cannot do without speculative metaphysics, the very fumes of grace. Also laudanum. Also green fairy. Also bohemian nights by the cathedral doused in burnt orange light. In the past, people thought the world was filled with magic. All the moths and tiny butterflies, the little flowers, the weirdness of trees. After cleverness, sense is overrated. Emerges from the mists of time like a hobgoblin, then scuttles off again, leaving us fearful in its absence. “Simon is a fatuous pauper.” What was it yesterday you were telling me that I was? Also, why do you look over at me like that lately so that when you leave I’ve felt forced to look back and stare a while after you’ve gone? And what is it about the absolute particularity of the way two people look at each other that leaves these inexplicably filigreed little bonds?

Simon Ravenscroft has published poems recently, or will soon, in Osmosis Press, The Inflectionist Review, The Penn Review, Heavy Feather Review, Atrium, Apocalypse Confidential, Full House Literary, ē·rā/tiō, and other places. He is a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, and his website is: simonravenscroft.haus


Poems by Dia Babylon

ALPHA-PLEASURE

You’re in the driver’s seat. 

We’re playing the alphabet game. 

Later you will kiss me,

This is a fool’s errand. 

I cannot be poetic or loving.

I am exhausted

Ambiguous 

Bedroom

Cathartic

And yet, I cannot let go of

This slippery, elusive future.

The road flashes, infinitely.

You mutter that my father has issues, 

I reply, “Doesn’t everyone?”

Two men miming.

No words and enormous 

Pain calcified like mountains. 

I fare no better. 

My easy phrases that 

Once brought comfort,

Are meager and hard to finesse.

Devilish

Erotic

The heat swells from the inside of the car.

There’s no way for us to 

Turn it off (????)

Your foot is pressing on the gas

And some mysterious electronic nightmare

Is burning through the soles 

of my fake leather shoes. 

Fascinated

Galivanting 

I think about you all the time.

I think about all the times 

I waited for you.

Why now do you finally show yourself? 

Hot

Implied

The feel of your chest

And your eyes cast down (lovingly?) on me —

Jizz

Kitten

Lovers

Moaning

All the annoying ways you love me,

All the stupid, silly things that make me 

Want to set myself on fire. 

Nefarious

Orgasmic

Plaything

I lap you up everytime

And resign myself to the simple fact

I want my own annihilation 

At least as much as you want your own. 

And of course

There is the problem of love.

Cross it all out. 

I’m not sure what terrifies me the most –

Losing you 

Or keeping you. 

Ravishing

Seduction

Tumble

Undress

Then there is the problem of time. 

I could be poetic about this but, 

You would still judge me nonetheless. 

This is my writing, 

This is my life, 

This is the juicy, car wreck mess

We make movies out of

Voluptuous 

Whenever

XXX

And now,

Without you, 

Already missing you terribly

I take a last sip of breath

And look at the road behind us, 

Folding in the dusk. 

Yearning

Zeitgeist

Answer me one last thing. 

Was it 

Amazingly, deliriously, darkly

Actually 

So much fun? 

WAITING

I was waiting for someone 

to give me the answer to the mystery. 

I remember my Grandmothers–

loving, and me, fumbling

Through broken Spanish

and humble gestures,

To craft an altar, like them,  that 

Would sustain me

I stood there, twenty-five years, waiting. 

thirty six until eternity, waiting.

Waiting for love.

Waiting for love to 

Knock me down like a 

Tidal wave.

Somehow, 

While I waited, I forgot

The old stories –

The ones that say

Joy comes.

And the more there is,

The more it becomes a shield.

Shining, metallic, laced, 

Resplendent.

No seams left undone,

No crevices for dark things 

To creep into

While you turn for an instant

Distracted by the 

Whistling of the tea-pot,

Or the rumble of the train.

I also remember 

When the two of us

walked side by side

On a gloomy winter night

Passing the garbage

and the stench of piss 

And the screeching rails.

After yet another train ride,

Seeing misery

Carved into face 

After face 

Like some awful

topographical map 

I asked you

How does anyone live?

How do people live so small and

So fucking fragile?

How do we

work day after day

Like my grandmothers

In the in the factories,

In the fast food chains,

In the offices

In the salons

In the Laundromats

And you said

They do it with love.

They make it because of love.

And the waves crashed all around me,

And crushed my heart with the weight

Of a formless, endless depth.

My grandmothers waved

from below.  

In oceanic darkness. 

Because at the time

 I never would have imagined 

That answer, 

In my quest for

Ambition,

Recognition, 

For all things tangible and desirable.

For the place

At the top of the tower.

The most obvious answer

hidden.

And immediately,

I imagined those people

With faces serious, and revered,

Worn and paint-chipped

Like some old Catholic statue –

At a dinner table

With their kids 

And their grandkids

With lives 

Full and rich and overflowing

Even in despair. 

And that’s when I truly witnessed the ravines

Laid across my face

And every other face in midtown.

And every other face in the world.

So I went home 

And said thank you for my house

And thank you for my wounds.

Thank you for the kitchen 

When it is crowded,

When there are no more chairs,

No more beds

And we’re scattered everywhere

Wrapped in each other’s arms

The beauty is to be shared.

Then the cracks don’t seem as deep,

The depths, not as dark.

The hunger, not as destructive.

These days,

I wish to see my face,

And in it, the faces of my loved ones

More than I wish for the things

I once imagined I wanted.

DIA BABYLON is a mercurial, multi-hyphenate artist, writer, and audio alchemist.

You can follow her work at www.dialunamusic.com and IG @dialunamusic 

You will not swing in the dark by Katharine Luzzatto

There is one perfect age; 

where you climb onto the swing by yourself and 

your body is not too wide. 

You can smoke a cigarette and

drown the butt because you’re afraid of forest fires you 

drown yourself in Family Dollar body mist so 

your parents can’t smell the menthol sludge you didn’t inhale. 

The bottle in your backpack clinks against nothing as you pick it up

You want to get home before dark because

You’re afraid of your neighbor cop arresting you for 

swinging on a swingset and 

not smoking a cigarette. 

You need to get home because

You don’t know the people that come to this park after dark because they’re grown and besides

It’s closed after dusk.

You get home and 

the front door sticks and shines in damp, moggy air, 

you pull it closed and 

you reek of coconut and nicotine and outside but your mother doesn’t mind and 

welcomes you back to the house you tried to swing away from. 

You say nothing but “I love you” and 

She hands you a leash

You click it closed around a soft and scuzzy neck and

walk back from whence you came.

You are pulled past the park, and 

there are people, and 

they are smoking and

They are inhaling,

but 

They are not swinging.

One day soon 

you will be them. 

I promise

You will realize that this age was a flickering instant.

And you will not swing in the dark. 

Katharine Luzzatto is a writer and student from Suffolk, Virginia. Her work has previously appeared in Crow & Cross Keys and The College of William and Mary’s The Flat Hat. You can find her on Instagram @katharine.luzzatto, and on Substack @katharineluzzatto. 




Poems by Thom C. Addington

Sibyl of Cumae

Would-be lovers will not want forever.

Edging feels a satin yard of inside,

but its edge penknifes—

so short and straight, 

the letting come (and go).  

They’ll gravel you—for and with—holding out.

I can be Boy Atthis with what remains.

Knees now footed for kneeling,

a rictus meets erection and

masks my ditch-grave mouth.

Both endings—ditch and grave—are man-made. 

More Than a Mouth

If the love-cursed Sibyl of Cumae 

graveled in a Mason Jar, would moonshine

dissolve her fully and offer easeful death?

I prefer drinking to

eating the pea-green 

soup of yearning.

If Sibyl’s voice is sweet

and her jar is clear, 

she might be asked what she wants.

My conscience chokes

in hanging like the omen,

“your bounds will dissolve.”

It boomerangs 

and strikes me as I try

erasing my guilt from the diary

of bodies I have 

tended like moths

in Mason Jars.

In catering to men, 
I have become

a thoughtful tender

of bar and body.

And why should I 

let guilt revenge itself

on me? I look nothing

like Augustine’s Sibyl, 

foretelling a Christ

that will smother me out

of the predicting business—

I only tell the men

who ask to fuck me

what they already know, 

and they always act surprised.

Nové koření[1]

I. Cinnamon has been used to embalm, to sweeten, and to keep wars going. When you have never been tasted, any spice is welcome, but I’d ruin myself for a pinch of the rare thing. I traced his chest tattoo at Tipitina’s for the night; I mummified myself to wrest a year. Pliny the Elder wrote that in Rome, cinnamon bought fifteen times more than silver. It took me fifteen asks to find out I’d become a depreciating asset without knowing—but then, a depreciating asset doesn’t feel its value in freefall until it hits a branch or the ledge of a building. He called it “lunch,” but it lasted all day—I left in December, and his new stock started paying on Epiphany.  

I pretended my taste was expensive so long that everything I once loved felt like dirt in my mouth.

II. Cloves share a bed well with black pepper, almost to the point where you can taste one in the other. While he did not have a taste for me that night, his hands were tired and needed holding; I was certain I had enough cinnamon on me to suggest a pleasing flavor. I wore out Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits that year but apparently skipped “Dreams” in each listen. Our every-Sunday brunch at the Market came early at the end and at night—“I texted my ex; we met up and I blew him.” I could only think of folding dampened sheets without the grace of a breeze or clothesline. He will ask me later if I think “monogamy is natural,” and it will only now register as a stupid question. 

I repeated “cloves are sweet” for so long that I started using black pepper in perníčky instead of sugar and grew accustomed to tastelessness. 

III. Anise star’s sweetness is often left to the whims of our faulty perception; most do not know it’s been medicine for millennia. I met her at what I thought was my best. This was enough for me—it shouldn’t have been. We found the new year three midnights in each other’s mouths, each odd-numbered. The next even year, she would become herself, and I would realize I was still in freefall—at least I’d be free of all former residues. 

Perníčky are all lovable, but each one wants its particular painting, to be a star if it is shaped so; I mourn becoming a devouring thing.

[1]  Nové koření in Czech—my great-grandmother’s language not passed down to me—means “All-spice,” and perníčky a decorated gingerbread cookies. 

Thom C. Addington (he/him) is a queer, Catholic, rural Southern poet with Appalachian roots raised on Rappahannock land in King & Queen County, Virginia. He currently serves as Associate Dean of Humanities & Social Sciences at Reynolds Community College.

2 poems by Nora Rawn

Pairs Short Program

Watch the backwards inwards death spiral,

technical element introduced in the 1948 Olympics,

the woman hovers smoothly, levitates, you recall your

last time ice skating solo, a snow day impulse,

memories of watching the rink below,

walks in the park with your lover, your affianced,

freedom of being lonely, difficulty of partnering,

how in the death spiral the woman arches her back, 

she circles the man’s skates smoothly,

there are four death spiral variants, a skill you wish you had, 

to survive entanglement, to remain entangled, 

to come off the ice triumphant, hand-in-hand

Bringing My Mother Along

Once I ran from the house

to hide from her

another time, punished, wrote on my bedroom 

dresser’s side how I hated her. 

What did I know? Nothing, 

and less even than that. 

Now I bring her with me wherever I go,

holding her hand that she may be safe.

Nora Rawn works in subrights in publishing and lives in Brooklyn. She has had pieces published or forthcoming in Dodo Eraser, Dreck Lit, Be About It Press, Electric Pink, Tap Into Poetry, Burial Magazine, Some Words, and Michigan City Review of Books. She spends too much time on twitter under @norabird.

Poems by Henry Luzzatto

Rubberneckin’

I passed by a church basement

full of old people dancing

cheek to cheek to rnb

on Valentine’s Day 

And all the young white single 

people in the city stopped

and said can you believe it?

Can you believe it?

And how could we? Believe that 

quietly each and every 

one all wanted that for us

We’d do anything 

for that to be us 

We’d give money, sex

trade our age for theirs 

to hold each other close in the basement 

and misremember youth we gave up for now

Clone Wars

How many guys with

stupid brown fiddly haircuts

do there need to be

before someone does something drastic?

I know I have a soul

a big blue mile-thick soul but

I don’t know about them

their teeth and black jeans and pus

truth is

I hate them

them I hate

the way an ape bares its teeth at the mirror 

Felix and Regula

Got too high and started imagining the kids I’m gonna have

I don’t usually think about the future of people that aren’t me

But I could see them

They weren’t much, just little scenes

unwashed kid hair and sticky breath

and myself, old, rounder

For my daughter 

who had a stupid name her mom picked out 

like Evangeline 

I dreamed about saying I wouldn’t just love her but 

would always give her the benefit of the doubt

the way boys don’t do with their women

And for my son

who was perfect

and named something big and sweet and dumb

that I got to choose

I just thought about all the baseball players

I want him to know were great 

Henry Luzzatto is a Brooklyn-based writer and musician. Originally from a swamp in Virginia, his work is featured in The Baffler, body fluids, ExPat Press, and more. 

THE ONLY WAY TO DRIVE THROUGH WYOMING IS WITH NO PANTS by Mike Barlow

There was that initial phase, that preliminary round of small talk.

The prelude to the fuck. That dreaded roundabout carousel of emotional attachment.
A one sided palaver at a fishing hole, she had a voice that could shatter a crystal meth pipe.
I smoked with her in my ears.
She talked herself into hysteria. Her true blonde blue eyes made clear water for an old man who
rode a Harley into a tree. I held her, cried some too, & even kissed a scar on her eyebrow.
I didn’t tell her I don’t know how to fish.
Only, no sex.
Yet, next time we met, we came fast.
Then slower. And slower. Until we vanished.
But fate brought us back.
If ever there was a sure sign, this was it: when your El Camino quits the road, and you’re
stranded, and she happens along in her 3 speed 2 tone junkyard wrecker, in plain english, this is
god saying, “This ain’t the time to make love, this the time to fuck!”
In her shrill heartland hillbilly twang that could circumcise a double dicked billy goat, she said,
“Well? Get in.”
In the cab, her unpainted grin told me she knew god was in our favor.
I asked, “Is there somewhere we can go?”
There was. We beelined for a carpet store dumpster, snagged up a barndoor sized roll of brand
new scrap, & lit out for the great plain countryside.
She remarked, “The fields are pretty this time of year. They make me feel nice.”
I didn’t tell her, but I was already hard. I said, “Yeah, fields. Nice.”
Dead leaves & river bottoms. Pussy lips & apple bottoms.
Mud flap chicks dipped in chrome & splashed with shit. Cattle prods & three legged dogs.
It didn’t matter how far she drove, I forgot the road home long ago.
We slapped the carpet down on the concrete slab of a no longer standing house that had blown
away. In the wide open spectacle of giant air, we went at it.

Both of us kept our boots on. Stripped to bareback steel toe penetrations, the west nile mosquito
swarms came & drank our blood. We came together and forgave each other for the lack of love.

Mike Barlow is a self taught vulgarian. More idiot. Less savant. Self published in a thousand
penitentiary letters. Went for what felt like years running from several respected communities
most wanted lists. Has stolen food for other reasons than hunger. Rehabilitated: for the sake of
conversation. Hasn’t ever understood a thing. Couldn’t be more pleased with his (sic) self

as drowned by Jen Adams

Jen Adams (she/they) is a UK-based researcher, feminist and writer.

A Good Place To Die by LaVern Spencer McCarthy

“When are you going to do it?” Lenny asked Susan.

“When am I going to do what?” she responded, laying a card carefully on the dining room table where she was playing Solitaire.

         “When are you going to kill yourself?” Susan glanced at him warily. 

         “I have no desire to kill myself.”

         “But you need to,” replied Lenny. “After all, it was you who had the affair and ruined my name in this town.”

         “Your name!” Susan screeched, slapping the card she held onto the table. “What about my name? Not only have you trashed me to my friends, you went to every bar in town talking about me, trying to get sympathy, but all they did was laugh at you.” Lenny kicked a small trash can over. 

         “I would never have done that if you had been a faithful wife.”

         “But the affair was over five years ago,” she reminded him. 

         “So I heard,” he retorted, but it’s new to me.” Susan stood, ready to leave the room.

         “You shouldn’t have listened to my former lover’s new girlfriend when she called here trying to make trouble.”

         “Oh, is that so? When I asked you if it was true, I expected you to lie, but now I know you told the truth about everything.”

         “Yes, I did,” she replied. “You should be man enough to let it go.”

         “I will NEVER let it go!” he roared. “You should die.” Susan ran into the bedroom and locked the door. Lenny had been this way ever since he found out about Susan’s affair. She felt like throttling the hussy who called her home and demanded Susan come talk with her about Susan’s former lover. Susan had refused, and the woman informed Lenny. None of this would have happened if the man she gave her heart to had kept his mouth shut.

         Susan became a pariah in the town where she lived. Everywhere she went she could hear snide remarks behind her back. Leering men made obscene gestures. She was forced to shop two towns over so as not to be seen by anyone she knew.

         Lenny was not innocent. He backhanded Susan for the slightest thing she did wrong, even before her confession about being unfaithful. She often went to work wearing dark glasses because of a black eye. As a receptionist at an insurance company, she had to be presentable. It was hard to hide a cut lip or swollen, bruised face. Her boss threatened to fire her if she didn’t leave Lenny. She had no place to go, no children, no family. No one cared what happened to her. 

         Lenny hung around her work place, often waiting for her at the ground floor of the elevator when she got off work. His face in a perpetual sneer, he would inquire as to when she would commit suicide. He decided he wanted to be present when it happened. Susan told him not to worry. She would make sure he was there if she did it.

         She wondered what Lenny would do if she did kill herself. She was the only one who worked. Lenny was a dead-beat who never lifted a hand to do anything except drink and play video games. Their marriage had gone steadily downhill. She wished she had never met him.

         She also wished he would see a therapist or mental health worker. Of course, anyone would be upset if a spouse cheated, but Lenny went too far. The torment had been going on for a year. Lenny began suggesting various places for Susan to kill herself.                                               He wanted her to shoot herself in their flower garden, but she said that would disturb the neighbors. There were too many parents with children at the city park. No, she would not go there. But she was thinking of ending her life more and more. What did she have to live for anyway? Lenny’s constant barrage of hatred and ridicule were causing her a great deal of depression and despair. Because of trauma Susan had been eating more. She was a big woman before, but now she topped three hundred pounds, something else for Lenny to make nasty remarks about. 

         At last Susan decided to do what Lenny wanted. When it happened, Lenny was

there just as she had promised. As he was walking past the building where Susan worked,

she jumped from her office window on the twelfth floor and landed squarely on his ugly

head. 

LaVern Spencer McCarthy, has published eight books of poetry and four books of short
stories plus three journals. Her poems have been published in Visions International,
Poetry Society of Texas Book of The Year, Open Skies Quarterly, National Federation of
State Poetry Society’s Encore, Austin Poetry Society’s Austin’s Best Poets, A Texas
Garden of Verses and numerous state anthologies and newspaper columns.
Her poem, October’s Agenda was nominated for the Pushcart Award in 2023.

Lavender by Reza Jabrani 

 

The half-empty bottle of lavender 

pure-castile soap haunting 

my shower for months 

after you left, the lonesome 

burning sudsy mornings 

moaning, masturbating, 

inhaling a floral memory of you.  

Reza Jabrani writes coarse prose and crude poetry @coarseprose

The Return by a.d.

For weeks she willed the horizon ablaze

with word of triumph

Smoke from her fires     sways lascivious in the mist

She dresses the house for his return

as a snake vestures itself in foliage    biding for prey

Finally the homecoming

Streets filled with petals     laughter     song

Expectant women     scan the victors for their sons

hope ebbing & absconding

She sees him    argentine    mightier than she remembers

feels an unwelcome stab       of tenderness like self-violation

On the carriage next to him     her daughter    alive

tears pulsating     threads of red dancing in the wind

He gleams    godlike    within the conglomeration

closer     closer—        She realizes his trick:

the girl      foreign      not her own

Fury intensifies within her       seizes her by the throat

resolve     floods her gut like semen

She bids him into the tyrian river     beguiling

the bowels of the butcherhouse

House ghosts nab at his feet    salivating for vengeance

he wades on    blind as a god to silent suffering

For ten years he has cheated death as it caressed him unknowingly

thinks himself inviolable     on par with the deathless gods

But her prayers have been steadfast   inerrant   

& Death is generous & heeding

She spinals the blade   

hones her resolve     into promise: 

the moonfall will see him dead

a.d. is drawn to the sacred, the profane, the mysterious and the mythological, which provides inspiration for her work. She is an award-nominated bisexual poet, writer, and visual artist, with words published in HAD, Blood+Honey, MCRB, REDAMANCY Mag, God’s Cruel Joke, HAWKEYE, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, her visual art, mainly photography and self-portraiture, is featured in Hominum Journal, Occulum, RESURRECTION Mag, Antler Velvet, Bleating Thing and other outlets. Tumblr & Twitter: @godstained

3 poems by Juliet Cook

Sawing Through

Lap dance underwater with

sharks.

Limbs tossed into 
bleeding mosh pits.

Those still alive are uniform,

guns, glass, hate.
Won’t stop shooting,
biting, spitting out

splintered heads they don’t want
to swallow.

Lacerated tongues which

can no longer speak.

Stuffed animal lair only

allows meat eating breeds

filled with contracting, contractual,
expanding killer teeth.

Dialect of smashed windows 

dragging you away.

Intrusive Obsession 

Hiding in the background,
then quietly limping to the side

of my peripheral vision,
then suddenly racing towards my headspace.


Screaming internally then constricting

my throat with heaves and gasps and

compulsions, every membrane screaming

obsessive images about how men are looking

at creampie dripping down 
younger women’s thighs 
and I’m a boring middle
aged woman his age

 
with saggy breasts and a heart
instead of just an opening

aimed to explode in his face.

Like a Ouija board strobe light inside

my brain, this obsession won’t stop

until my head splatters.

Invisible Ink

Possible poem lines emerge in bed,

in the midst of what seems like a semi-dream/

semi-reality state, followed by internal glitch

in which a semi-truck aims to run over

my new lines or my entire head. 


I thought I had managed

to temporarily sit up and 

write down my impending words, but

the first pen was devoid of ink. 

The second pen spit a thin drizzle

of almost invisible blood,

which soon disappeared. 

When I awoke, nothing new

was on the page. Had my words ever been there

at all? I could no longer remember the words
which had felt like they were writing themselves

inside my semi-invisible brain.

Perhaps it was just an illusion.

The bedside table was loaded

with hundreds of sheets of paper,

repetitive to-do lists. But no poetry. 

My new lines must have been 
thrown away or swallowed or 
trapped inside the dream or else 

never fully existed. 

I re-entered real life,

viewed the latest news,
saw death, murder, evil

worse than nightmares.
Part of me wished I was still stuck
in a dream. If I look away, am I acting
like another dead body is invisible ink? 

Juliet Cook doesn’t fit inside an Easy-Bake Oven and rarely cooks. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently including “red flames burning out” (Grey Book Press, 2023), “Contorted Doom Conveyor” (Gutter Snob Books, 2023), “Your Mouth is Moving Backwards” (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2023), “REVOLTING” (Cul-de-sac of Blood, 2024), and “Blue Stingers Instead of Wings” (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025). Her most recent full-length poetry book, “Malformed Confetti” was published by Crisis Chronicles Press. You can find out more at https://julietcook.weebly.com/.

from wastes / wraiths by James Knight

in air thick with lack of light deep stink of hot mammal

and stabbing breath

looped like my passage through this space

what is it we fear when images come to mind

do we sense something that inhabits rooms and woodlands

beyond exhalation

under duress

my door ceases to be mine

I crumple into an apology the bedsheets are too clean for me

when the human beast arrives it hunkers down and won’t budge

remembering the man gone mad asleep

clubbing his family to death

James Knight is a poet, artist, performer and publisher based in the UK. Publications include Cosmic Horror (Hem Press), Rites & Passages (Salò Press), Machine (Trickhouse Press) and Void Voices (Hesterglock Press). Website: www.thebirdking.com. Bluesky: @badbadpoet. Instagram: @jkbirdking.

Music #4: To Wander by Robert Frede Kenter

What was our poison touch, of palm lines

centred on hands, opening chords

into the body, incisions rent inside

like wreathless layers of skin?

A glorious kinetic estrangement 

feed-back loops speaking in tonality /  

urban reconstruction:  organ runs,  skronky sax,

industrious clarity / at the edge. In the frame, 

increments. And 

some time later, New York City,

alone. Glorious / audacity.

I saw your shadow forty feet long crossing

father demo square to come up stairs

after the ritual throwing up of food 

I tossed down the ring with the skeleton key.

Enactments between us always began with something 

breath/ less. Taking starkest energy. 

Was it you then, 

dressed in a white tuxedo? Art student

of midnight, your ironed shirt,  clover-patterned pants

sitting angular at the edge of a conceptual stare, 

a concrete floor, iron bed-sit, installation.

Being, the notion of prayer, 

or, in waiting at an abutment outside the Mudd Club

or somewhere else , in another outfit,

I remember your troweled performance on a couch

in the sprung rhythms of acid house.

Such memories / walk / me waking 

forward

to specular lipstick on pale skin,

circular meridians drawn in cups

from a river. 

To tie red hemp rope around your

waist,  tautly hold down your thigh

to hook beneath the back of knees 

for levitation,  a shuddering radio static 

meeting clustered mind, gathering up

in suspension’s glove for inertia. We ache 

in de-evolution towards ancestors, the 

awesome incisive markings, spine of 

your bridge, arched, offering, gravity-less

spectral juxtapositions: wigs / wraps, 

buttoned / in collated 

collars; marginalia  /collective sighing of electric

guitars in process  /a novel /

pages with annotations, yes, without 

you we are in for a long triage.

Hand over hand, climbing over 

indelicate industrial clamor, unrolling   

typewriter ribbons to erase propaganda broadsheets / smear

the news and various 

other kinds of puppeteer topographies / 

with spilled black ink blood.

Wandering / steps behind a

procession. At the parade grounds of immolation,

we sit on our knees, for hours / Try to 

stand up straight with

a wishbone lodged in the prism of

your throat, already broken, outmaneuvered /

we were plates of glass, shattered

fragments, separated from everything. 

Sometimes /planes take off from here,

on time. Even cauliflower 

softens in the pan.  You were once

serenaded by electricity volts, hand-held by numbers

of your fans who came to see you perform.

 (new stanza)

Now / (note): I serenade your memory. 

Dictate stenographic emblems 

to exposed toes. I

want to shake in crescendo, howling

in a complicated realm of teeth.

Programmed noise for synthetic generative 

chatter. 

Titled, Music # 4: It is /

so cold outside. Never forgot 

your urgency /

The predilection / to wander.  

Robert Frede Kenter is a widely published writer, visual artist, performer, & publisher of
Ice Floe Press (www.icefloepress.net) with work in over 200 publications published or
forthcoming including: Watch Your Head, Harpy Hybrid, ballast, winged moon, ABR, storms
journal, heavy feathers, petrichor, Cable Street, Burning House, Pissoir, Lost & Found Times,
Blood & Honey, Otoliths, Paragraph, The Prose Poem Journal etc.. In Anthologies incl:
Capitalism is a Death Cult (Sunday Mornings at the River), Speaking in Tongues (Steel
Incisors), The Book of Penteract (Penteract Press). Interpoem 1 & 2 (Sedserio), Glisk and
Glimmer (Sidhe Press). Select books: Moon Writing (with Catherine Graham) (Ice Floe Press,
2026), In the Blueprint of Her Iris (with Vikki C) (Ice Floe Press, 2025), Father Tectonic (Ethel
Zine, 2025), Audacity of Form (Ice Floe Press, 2019). Robert was guest editor of Secrets and
Lies (July, 2019) at Burning House Press and has lots of other projects on the go.
Soc media X: @frede_kenter, IG: icefloe22, r.f.k.vispocityshuffle, Bluesky:
@rfredekenter.bsky.social‬.

3 poems by Laurence Lillvik

American Sonnet #61

did you leave me here to collapse 

or was your intention to transform 

me into an elk? it’s important to 

know because we used to park

at the waterfront in Red Bank 

and make out and there was 

that one time when a cop car

pulled up right next to us and 

it looked like I was all alone in 

the back seat of my car and you

really seemed to … well, you 

had a flair for the dramatic, and

i often behaved like a child, blood

sugar issues and all of that shit. 

Wraith

I’ve been privy to your bold designs, 

Cold-called by piss merchants in

The dead days of spring, and seen 

Your type on the esplanade, 

Gumming yourselves mute, with 

Expectations of recognition.

And who am I, you may ask, 

So granular in my critiques of 

Pure season, when just last week 

I was pulling my skivvies on 

With a pair of grilling tongs? 

Hey, even a cool breeze on flayed skin

Is better than a hot sleep with dreams of you. 

Even a dozen spins 

Around the town’s worst rotary, 

Exit signs obscured by the 

Shimmying smog you call a

Marine layer, won’t leave me as dizzy

As one playback of your voicemails.

Selected Ambient Works

An outstretched and oversized-

Darlin’ you can kill kidnap me-

Kind of hand. Ringless 

In the dull light, sunbleached

An afterthought. The roving

Cloudburst with ark-making

Deluge revisits your pathway.

It’s unusual for the snakes 

To roost in the fickle strawbeds 

Of your youth. Time-released 

madness always often tricks 

The lizard brain into a ceasefire. 

Oh honey honeyed ointment, 

Leave us sticky and commendable

Laurence Lillvik (Portland, OR) is the editor of “Skullcrushing Hummingbird,” an international arts and literature zine. A new full-length collection of poems, “Catharsis Is Never Fully Shorn From Glee,” is forthcoming from Trident Press in the spring of 2026. His chapbook “Criterion” (Greying Ghost Press) was a featured small press title at Powell’s Books. His poetry has also appeared in several literary journals and DIY poetry chapbooks. Musically, Laurence is the founder of KalloHumina, an umbrella project for solo work and live improvised collaborations. He’s worked in Public Libraries for over two decades. IG: larstarts / skullhum.com

SUMMER NEEDS by Sara Matson

<1>

my suede hand

warm + gloved

pinning swollen fist on 

either side of ur mandible

+ screaming until the jaw

snaps (so visceral !)

my wet thigh sticky

(unexpected blood)

i tuck my body beneath

stubbed nose cold comfort

watching my verbal tics echo 

in the rugless lobby

my god, 

that’s what summer needs

a cropped linen jacket

just shaped enough

to warm my tits in 

cool summer shade

no pride or shame in making

an old woman cry

… i’m the old woman

<2>

the ridiculousness of lunch glass

or getting chewed out

in the afternoon thicket 

… unthinkable !

vibrant creature,

effervescence of youth

forest green + humbled by

succulence or prosperity,

buccal fat smeared in shiny layers

refracting age or wisdom

<3>

then me

+ the vibes i give: 

                   nervous forgiveness

                   stuffed with love which cannot carry

                   s w a m p

                   incurable lack/deepest ache

                   sun schemes (insofar as to stop the sun

                                     and it’s bullshit)

                   but like,                … friendly ?

yes, 

my hairline continues

to fur itself by fireplace

many extra fingers invited to 

light + curl 

squeezing crunch into velvet

 
before botox is just called youth

let me lick yours like a ruffle, 

like a scream in church !

in my mother’s voice: 

                            CRY OUT A WINDOW ABOUT IT

                            TELL THE MIDNIGHT MAN 

                            REMEMBER THE SLIME RIVER

ah,

of course

her indifference reminds me

to invoke the river of slime

to soak my sins in

the neon absolution

of undone mildew stains

like imposition over injury

<4>

the back of my neck 

is so hairless

(from          the accident)

that when i was nailing my wistfulness

to the new wallpaper

i adhered myself to the baseboard

gathering dust like spring grain

in my historically accurate suit

admiring medieval books

on weddings 

+ informal sutures 

Sara Matson (she/her) is a poet in Chicago and host of the seasonal online reading series Words // Friends. Her poems can be found in Discount Guillotine, Kicking Your Ass, The Chicago Reader and elsewhere. Her favorite color is lime green and you can find her on Instagram @skeletorsmom and Blue Sky @saramatson.bsky.social. 


4 poems by Damon Hubbs

Olympia

Real love. Unsparing introspection

Oh, for heaven’s sake 

fucking ____________________  . 

  1. Jennifer
  2. You (& Jennifer) 
  3. Jack the Modernist
  4. Veronica, Ted, Sabalenka, Sailor Socialism
  5. the museum goers at The Frick, 

a poem for trapped things, the solar anus

the girl whose lips

are like 

the last helicopter 

out of Saigon

O lose the noise 

you’re going to be all right

go home, spoon the Hitachi     

blackmatter

Berkshire Hathaway

     Dear Cinnette, 

     did you obtain cheap land, seek fortune, 

     join a religious community—

     I’m taking the kitchen sink approach 

            Where do the coordinates lead…

Delia Deetz died. 

The Lily Jean sank off the coast of Gloucester. 

The streets are draped in anti-drone nets. 

Today, when I was looking at the clouds 

I remembered how Leni Riefenstahl attached automatic cameras to balloons. 

     I want to fall in love 

     with a blind flower girl

     who mistakes me 

     for a millionaire. 

Even the Automobiles Here Seem to Be Ancient 

Dear Cinnette, I grew tired of the world 

at the Braintree split      

but there’s no shepherdess in sight

the ice floes on the Merrimack look like wounded angels

Dear Cinnette, the sun’s fixed stare expresses something beyond death

I’m letting my beard grow  

Let’s just say 

your period 

is the ultimate form of punctuation

Which one of your phone calls changed my life      fuck

     it

I’m raising a toast to Odin 

and the beauty of Japanese volcanoes

Last I heard you hitched a ride to Salt Lake     

O     Madonna 

        of the Trail— 

                          Dear Cinnette, Infinite Jest turned 30  

Sabalenka was penalized for a midpoint grunt

I saw a woman at Stop & Stop 

buying avocados 

like it’s 2010

I heard Thom bit off a prostitute’s toe in Prague

I’m high on benzos       godspark     

Dear Cinnette          Il faut être absolument modern

Did you know in 1955 

Friehofer’s still used horse drawn carts 

to deliver baked goods in Schenectady— 

Imagine if your whole job was putting cherries on cupcakes

Imagine if our midpoint grunt went on forever. 

Dobermann

If you said all I do is write love poems

     I’d say I’m solving the crisis of panty lines 

but that’s just another comedy 

for our conspiracy 

theory   

age

Again the snow is scatterbrained

millions of individual 

amens

and I’m thinking 

about the time 

we had sex at the Tate Modern

If you said it was like a love poem 

featuring Rouveyre’s car and several Soviet bikers

     I’d say 

look at the charm of the industrial streets.  

Fun is a steel bath in Mitteleuropa,  

your tongue like a menacing dobermann. 

MALMO

it feels very intimate, very private 

being an author and a character simultaneously

like a crowd of people 

at the beach 

screaming      shark!    Shark!

Quite unlike the Oulipians

who organize their internet novels 

by color

fake barn country 

the IKEA back catalogue. 

      Dear Cinnette, 

I prefer the dark arts 

“So we shall take the train here to MALMO, 

then get into the car 

and drive home to our house, 

and all the way I shall revel in, 

truly revel in”

how we used to smoke 

in bed on Sundays 

and read The Boston Globe, 

Akhmatova, Letters to a Young Poet, 

the cat purring like 

a bloom of chocolate, 

mirrors caressing the room 

and the sense of things 

careening

towards

a head

still a long 

way

     off

like a seizure 

on a boat 

in the middle of the sea

Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. His latest collection, Bullet Pudding, is forthcoming from Roadside Press in 2026. Recent publications include Horror Sleaze Trash, Apocalypse Confidential, Be About It Press, Revolution John, The Literary Underground, RESSURECTION magazine, and others. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. He is a poetry editor at Blood+Honey and The Argyle Literary Magazine. bluesky: @hubbsd.bsky.social

FEBRUARY 2026 Guest Editor Is Ingrid M. Calderón!!! Theme: LOVE & HATE

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

Submissions are open from today 1st February – and will remain open until 25th February.

Ingrid’s theme for the month is as follows

___

LOVE & HATE

___

Where does love end and hate begin? As an advocate of love in all its manifestations, I‘ve often found myself pondering and teetering on the soft umbilical cord of disillusionment when it comes to these emotions. I am not alone. Love & hate are siblings, —often share a room and define themselves by the company they keep. If needs remain unmet, what changes and how fast before combustion? If disappointment isn’t addressed, love and hate begin their resentful coexistence of two high volume breeds of circuitry.

All feelings at once please!

Ache. Want. Lust. Desire. Hate. Hostile. Loathe. Thirst. Hunger. Disgust. Violence.

I invite you to send poetries, hallucinations, uncomfortable journal entries and artworks pulled from the depths of where love & hate live inside you.

Ingrid is a poet, seer, collagist and the solitary editor of Resurrection magazine. She resides in Los Angeles, CA

___

  • SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
    • All submissions should be sent as .doc or .docx attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com. No cover letter is necessary but please include a short third-person bio and (optional) photo of yourself for potential print with your submission. You may also consider including social media usernames, especially if you’re on Bluesky/Instagram– I want to promote your work!
    • Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: LOVE&HATE/FICTION
    • Submissions are open until 25th February and will reopen again on 1st March 2026 for a new theme/new editor/s.

    • 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.

_______

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Ingrid M. Calderón – friends, arsonistas, send our February 2026 guest editor your magic!

JANUARY 2026 Guest Editor Is KAWAI SHEN!!! Theme: ULTRAVIOLET

Burning House Press are excited to welcome Kawai Shen as the sixth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today Kawai will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of January.

Submissions are open from today 3rd January – and will remain open until 25th January.

Kawai’s theme for the month is as follows

___

ULTRAVIOLET

  • Fresh bruises, wine stains, amethyst talismans, wilted lilacs, metallic fougeres, overripe mulberries, indigo children, laser burns, grape candy, supernova dust
  • Inspiration: Sei Shonagon, William S. Burroughs, Angela Carter, Mervyn Peake, Réjean Ducharme, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Aurora Mattia

Kawai Shen is based in Canada. Her fiction was shortlisted for the 6th edition of The Metatron Prize for Rising Authors and was selected for the Best Canadian Stories 2025 anthology. She has published work in khōréō, ergot, Extra Extra, The Whitney Review, A Fucking Magazine, and more. Her book, Wavering Futures, is forthcoming with Metatron Press in 2026.

AUTHOR PIC: photographer, Paul Hillier.

______

  • SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
    • All submissions should be sent as .doc or .docx attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com. No cover letter is necessary but please include a short third-person bio and (optional) photo of yourself for potential print with your submission. You may also consider including social media usernames, especially if you’re on Bluesky/Instagram– I want to promote your work!
    • Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: ULTRAVIOLET/FICTION
    • Submissions are open until 25th January and will reopen again on 1st February 2026 for a new theme/new editor/s.
      • Fiction: Fiction should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. Up to two micros (maximum 500 words) may be sent.
      • Poetry: You can try your luck with poetry, but this issue will focus on purple prose. Submit no more than three poems.
      • Art: Submit a maximum of six hi-res images of your work in JPEG format (maximum size 2MB) with descriptions of each work (Title, Year, Medium) in the body of the email. File names should correspond with the work titles.

_______

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Kawai Shen – friends, arsonistas, send our January 2026 guest editor your magic!

My Heart Is Empty: Responses to The Life and Work of Nico – December 2025 edition Guest Edited/Curated by Matthew Kinlin

Always Leave Them Wanting Less by Matthew Kinlin
Continue reading “My Heart Is Empty: Responses to The Life and Work of Nico – December 2025 edition Guest Edited/Curated by Matthew Kinlin” →

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