bloody phantom planet
ghosts aren’t
invisible
or made of strange
otherworldly
vapors
look around
you
every occupied
house
is
haunted
&
ghosts are
made
The Greatest Critical Apparatus
Can public imagination,
not public
reason,
realize explosions
are rewarding
for survival? Continue reading “3 Poems by Patrick Williams”
my body is not my body
when i’m held mouth wide open, blood oozing, dreading your extraction of part of my body. i’m only six. i’m not asleep. i never forgot.
i’m eighteen. adult, or so they say. part of my body breaks so more space is filled with you & all you carry. it hurts. in retrospect, it always hurt. it always will. Continue reading “‘my body is not my body’ by Nadia Gerassimenko”
Untitled (for Andre Breton)
Nostalgic sentiments and new wave nocturnes
intersecting in a normal chaos of life
an hourglass of neglected affinities
idols of saturated phenomena
night of filth, night of flowers
the aporia of revelation Continue reading “5 Poems by Rus Khomutoff”
A Critique on the Self-Portrait
I am alone now,
Seven years from the girl
I used to be.
The last clear identity
Known to my shaking heart Continue reading “2 Poems by Tahnee Flaws”
The Pool
The water in the pool
was not the same blue
when summer faded.
Colors of autumn
was a confusion–
when green became brown.
Waves of the wind,
Reflection of emotion,
unable to be translated. Continue reading “The Pool by Orawan Cassidy”
An Expenditure of Munitions
Twenty-seven orphans
cleaning and oiling,
polishing up their rifles. Continue reading “3 Poems by Gary Carr”
Jem
‘Bet I can climb to the top’, Jem Mason says, round blue eyes burning in a sun-touched, freckled face. We all stare up at the roof of the almost finished house.
‘No way,’ Cory Sullivan says.
‘Bet you three strawberry laces I can,’ Jem says, already pacing towards the gates of the building site.
The bet was on. Continue reading “‘Jem’ by Kate Jones”
Island Nation
I stood there and watched
the scowling coast
as rocks became
as liver spots
and waves passed
generations;
grey England’s changing
faces: foam and roar
erased
and formed
new morning’s
golden desolate shore. Continue reading “2 Poems by Ben Williams”
Less Than Human
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”
My Eyes
My eyes are vexed
not from crying
but from the tally
of sins unwept,
allowed to swell
in dull, blue renderings
just below the surface
of head and heart,
like a tattoo of tears or
a debris dammed creek,
symbols of damage
past the point of
erasure or release. Continue reading “2 Poems by C. R. Resetarits”
Dirge of the Dying Year
My first thought was, “Run!” Others chose suicide. Soon I was stumbling around like the bad kids who huff glue. Mothers dumped raw meat out into the street in protest. Sirens began to woo-who, woo-who. I was in a headspace that was pricked with stars I couldn’t identify, 50 by last count and all of them always promising to return to their wandering orbits. Now what do we do? There’s just too much in the workings of the world that’s hidden and unknowable, even by a person with an education. And that person was standing where the bullets began to rain into the limousine. We’re living in a boisterous age. Velocity is advancing everywhere, the walls covered in flames and the flames behaving in ways no one thought possible. I’m afraid of human beings. We run things in the forest while the wolf isn’t around. Eyes that don’t want to close at all times ruin everything, pretty much every word. The sadness will last forever. I can’t remember now why I ever thought it wouldn’t. Continue reading “3 Prose Poems by Howie Good”
Magpies, Re-runs and Lost Time
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”
Part 3: ‘Discussing Death’
My first memory of death is linked to a man I never knew. My mother’s father died of a heart attack before I was born; the irony is that I know more about his death than I do about his life.
The entirety of the man has been reduced to a single black-and-white obituary photograph that my mother faithfully keeps at her prayer altar. Then, there are the stories. The stories of what an influence he was in my mother’s life, how he used to work with the British Royal Navy (this was in the 1940s and 1950s, in a pre-independent Singapore that seems as much of a myth as my late grandfather), and of course, the stories about how he died, and how that changed his entire family’s life.
It is funny, what death does. It slowly morphs to form the central narrative of a person’s life, as if only through death did his life gain meaning and importance and weight.
Continue reading “‘Walking Towards Death’ – 5 Essays on Mortality by Arathi Devandran”
Iconic
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
Dream Wedding
I.
The dress is white and silk and sheer. Mother puts a hand on her chest, tells me that she is so proud but I look at her wrists and her string of fate clashes with her softness—an accessory out of place with her flowers and stars.
II.
I walk down the aisle covered by a veil of light—the handiwork is flimsy, I know the weaver’s still getting the mechanics of it—holding a bouquet that has been wilting for days now; it stinks of anger and disappointment, pungent and bitter and sour.
III.
My fiancé lifts the veil: I wonder what he sees—I, no longer a girl, but nearly feral, nearly clawing out a ribcage, with lips bleeding roses and charcoal masking eyes. I wonder if he can still recite his vows in the face of an oncoming storm.
I.V.
The rings are the sun melted down to fit both of our fingers. The varnish chokes the air in my lungs. He says I do as he slides his ring on my finger, something in me screams and collapses, shattering into muted petals. I say I do as I slide my ring on his finger, I hope he hears the clink of ball and chain linked around our hands.
V.
The night after the reception he’s in the bathroom and he won’t come out. With the door in between us, I ask why and he said that he did not marry a wolf, he did not marry to be eaten alive. I told him that someone had to, for tradition’s sake. I also said that girls weren’t meant to howl at the moon every night.
Leaves, Blades, Cupboards (I)
Show me your bones.
Tell me what they would say
if they could speak their reasons.
That is your smile hand-sewn over pursed lips
(in time the stitches have disappeared).
All but a card trick—sleight of a poised hand.
I understand this well, all show and no tell—
the body a floor plan of pain.
TINDER OF THE “DESPERATE MAN”
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
Halfway Up The Street
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.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 