I told you I was here.
Cookie Scene - miller lavon
@MillerLavonLit
scene
eating iced oatmeal cookies
bathside
south by south-east Georgia
new scene
walking in the rain
Japanese countryside village
Nakasendo
starring
the lost samurai
bringing the ball up
the last highway
mirror metamorphosis
instant transmission
into
the double
vertigo nightmare crawling across Earth
hard to recognize a reflection
in a puddle
being rained on
Miller Lavon is a 30-year-old author, who grew up in southern Georgia. After reading Jack Kerouac's works in his twenties, he began writing seriously. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science and enjoys writing satirically about the government and most other things. Miller lives in Savannah, Georgia. He spends his free time watching movies, reading books, drinking Heineken, and writing with his editor pets, Harmony T. Cat and Orangey.
platform of the last train - ryan di francesco
@ryan_difrancesco
shadows bloom among bent blankets
in folded fields under sunshine
slipping across lit mouths blowing
the dimming day beyond the curve of reality
roughed up between bodies and roots of earth,
writhing like fossil veins
dancing on shop windows, moving as embers
across endless concrete, past drifting strangers
under the enlarged pale sun,
lifting dire dreams from pockets
by spent fingertips beneath
the skeleton moonlight,
poking a burnt-out fir
dipping underground
to catch the last train tonight
as it watches from the platform
like it’s waiting for you
in a fresh suit tailored for now—
whispering: hello delicately
Ryan Di Francesco is a Canadian writer and teacher. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Shadow and Sax, an emerging literary magazine, where his poetry and short fiction have appeared. His debut chapbook, The Paper Hound, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. His poems and stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Toronto Star, The Pit Periodical, Ink in Thirds, Bicoastal Review, Bitter Melon, Rawhead, SHINE Quarterly, SQUID Magazine, The Orange Rose, The Amphibian, The Page Gallery, and more. He also co-wrote the indie film Streets of Wonderland, which won multiple festival awards.
Static Where My Name Was - Abhishek Kumar Singh
There was a mouth on the wall once.
Didn’t say anything just moved like it remembered a name.
I think my shadow blinked before I did.
The clock was broken, but it still ticked like it had something to regret.
She left behind her voice, not herself.
I folded it like laundry and smelled nothing.
The hallway I walked led straight back to a version of me I forgot.
I knocked on a door it only opened if I closed my eyes.
A man gave me my eyes in a glass of milk.
I switched off the TV, but the static whispered like it knew me.
Abhishek Kumar Singh is a poet and experimental writer whose work dances between memory, dreamscapes, and the absurd. His poetry has appeared in Friday Night Library, Poetry Nation, Life in a limbo, Suburban Witchcraft and Tough Poets Review. He often blends cinematic surrealism with emotional residue. He writes from India, but his imagination drifts through abandoned hallways and VHS static.
Viscera - Fee Cuimeanach
@la__fee
Now it is dark. A few large stars, overhead
lines crossed. Hair like wings and laughter
between trees. All things are softer at night.
Come closer. Steps reverberate from the bones
of a staircase. Walls carpeted in pink cushion blows
(the kind of pink you think you’d find inside yourself).
In the distance a lone figure dances to the sound of squealing
tyres and the pulsing thrum of the big machine. Bruises bloom
blue across a broken bone. Streets sleep fringed with pale balustrades;
dots and dashes to render words left unsaid at sundown.
Everything is a reaction to something.
A liturgy for those who are still searching.
Man oh man.
Fee Cuimeanach is a writer and artist based in the west of Scotland. Her work has been featured in Gutter Magazine, Lucent Dreaming, and Severine Lit. She is the Director at Six Foot Gallery in Glasgow.
fetish no. 2 - Damon hubbs
The trauma in my left thumb tastes like cherry Louboutin.
Naked or dressed, LA is a mess.
When Sandy said toe cleavage I forgot all about the schools of dead fish.
Through the peephole the Tuscan kitchen is framed in 9/11 blue.
If the owls are the brakemen
then like
Puss in Boots
I fooled the king.
O my cock is a cool doughy thing.
I/m healing like a left handed sonnet
but that’s just to say my skeleton is acting up. The last time
I was in your Tuscan kitchen
I saw semen
fall like suicides. I thought I was a pop idol.
Damon Hubbs is the poetry editor at Blood+Honey and The Argyle Magazine. He's the author of the full-length collection Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Recent publications include Pool Party Magazine, Hobart, Horror Sleaze Trash, Urban Pigs Press, Yellow Mama, Expat Press, Farewell Transmission, and others. He lives in New England.
Somatic Rabbit Exercise - rYAN hOOPER
(for a woman in trouble)
@heavycloudhaze
today i become
the wrong animal
put on the costume
do not check the mirror
boil water
do not drink
hum into static
ears forget your name
sit on the sofa
spine remembers
television warmth
say:
there is a sound
outside the wall
say again
say until
the wall replies
iron a shirt
that does not belong
whisper still
don’t apologise
for being
on the other side
press hand
to the floor
and ask:
am i the sitcom or the ritual?
Ryan Hooper is a Cornwall-based writer, artist and sound maker whose mixed media work explores the intersections of memory and landscape.