For Marco
You’re fifteen, you’re trembling. The only working street light flickers and omits an ominous orange glow. Everything else is dark–the night, the thoughts in your head, the gun in your hand. The car slows as you approach the corner. There they are, Uncle Joe whispers, tonight you become a man.
Continue reading “Bar Mitzvah by Brett Dixon”
On Blood
The blood I scrub from the inside of my underwear is not the same as the blood I wipe from my mouth, not the same blood my mother lost when laboring over my birth, not what spilled from my grandmother’s head when her stepfather split it open for scrubbing a floor wrong. Not the same, but close.
Continue reading “On Blood by Kaylie Padgett”
The Last Time It Bled
the last time I bled was when I stood on glass
the worst time I bled was when they put the scissors in my vagina
Continue reading “The Last Time It Bled by Emma SzH”
DISEASES OF THE BLOOD
5q- syndrome, Aagenaes syndrome, Abdominal aortic aneurysm, Abetalipoproteinemia, Acatalasemia, Aceruloplasminemia, Acquired agranulocytosis, Acquired hemophilia […]
Continue reading “DISEASES OF THE BLOOD by Louis Armand”
Colostomy John
Leviticus met Genesis in the Walgreens at the southeast corner of North Highland Ave and Santa Monica Blvd.
Continue reading “Colostomy John by Shane Jesse Christmass”
Ryan Madej is an experimental writer of various fictional/non-fictional narratives and other literary ephemera. Also a middling sculptor of ambient soundscapes from forgotten dimensions. Books, music, hashish: my three inspirations. Twitter: https://twitter.com/blurtbleen?lang=en
Meeah Williams is a writer & graphic artist. She lives in Seattle w/her husband & cat. Some of her most recent work is linked here http://neutralspaces.co/meeah_williams/. She tweets @pussy_nagasaki
Your consciousness is homeless and itinerant for quite some time in a significant physical journey. And you must build it its home, or its redoubt. That redoubt is specific to the journey. And like a tortoise’s shell the redoubt accompanies you on the journey even as it grows. Its construction is excruciatingly frustrating and failure-ridden. Accept this. Construction of the redoubt is the journey.
Arrival takes place much later cognitively.
Accept this.
Continue reading “Redoubt by John Trefry”
If shadows are the two-dimensional projections of three-dimensional objects, then does it mean that three-dimensional objects are shadows cast by things in the forth-dimension?
My shoes made a tapping noise in the rain as I walked towards the house. Stepping inside the white noise of the downpour was unnaturally and quickly severed, along with the sound of my steps. At first, the house looked exactly the same as on my first visits, as a child, a long time ago. It was, however, dimmer than I remembered and it took my eyes some time to adjust to the darkness and find the light switch. Once they came slowly on they didn’t seem to make much difference, as all the lights had been diffused by various pieces of cloth shrouding them. Though it did allow me to begin seeing certain curious changes. At one time it had been immaculate, with every surface polished to a fine sheen, but now it looked tired and forgotten, a cover, as I later learnt, for a calculated and careful state of disrepair. Continue reading “The House, Cogitatio Amphibolia by Matthew Turner”
The Watersteps are ruins now, but you can still see what is left of them by walking through the dank forest on the edge of town, over the train lines and then down to the crease where two wave-like hills meet. The steps sit half-swallowed inside a wide clay gorge. A little further up the gorge, there’s a stream at least half as wide as the gorge itself. It drops down an accidental waterfall caused by the collapse of the Watersteps. A sheet of tarpaulin wafts, hit by the unravelling crystal carpet of water. For the most part, the stream disappears amongst the rubble and soft ground at the foot of the waterfall. Only further down does a meagre version of it reform, bypassing the steps entirely.
The Watersteps have haunted my imagination for a long time. The first poem I ever wrote was about the steps. I hated it, re-wrote it, destroyed it and started again. I have been repeating each step ever since.
Continue reading “The Watersteps by BR Williams”
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”
The road was cunning under the tires, slipping and pulling as I turned onto the forest service road beside Stave Lake. I was crunching over the gravel with plumes of dust filling the air behind me. It smelt more like desiccated mud than grit or ash. It was hot for May, and I had no idea where the road would lead. I was between two guides: the GPS and a nineteenth century memoir exhumed from the archives. Both were illuminating the screen of my phone, and I was alternating between the two when I would pause.
1890 – As I learned more of the country and surroundings I realized what wonderful fishing and shooting was to be had in the different lakes and streams not far distant from the City. The Pitt River, the Lillooet River, the Stave and Harrison Rivers, and the lakes from which they came, although well known to the timber cruiser and trapper, had not yet been explored by the great majority of the young men of the City. Continue reading “Stave in the Autobiography of Sidney Ashe Fletcher by James Gifford”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 