BAD VIBES

A HOUSE OF VLAD PRODUCTION

© 2024 by House of Vlad Press

All rights reserved. No part of this content may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publish­er, with the exception of excerpts used for critical essays and reviews.

These are mostly works of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 

Release Date: February 1, 2024

Guest Editor: Kris Hall (aka Barracuda Guarisco; C.C. Hannett)

Cover design: Percy Hearst

Cover photo: Andrew Chadwick  

Author photos © the authors

Founder and editor: Brian Alan Ellis 

Contributors:  Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, Ian Crutcher Castillo, Michael Crossley, Robert Dean, Brian Alan Ellis, KKUURRTT, Alexandra Naughton, D.T. Robbins, Jennifer Robin, Devany Robinett, Anthony Robinson, Alex Wells Shapiro, Jude Stratis, Stephan Zguta, Gregory Zorko

Thanks for reading.

HOUSEOFVLADPRESS.COM

TO ATTEND

The King

James brought the The Wicker Man on DVD to my basement apartment on a warm May day in 2008. On a couch that I had stolen from the college campus six blocks away, we watched a willing king-like virgin living to die in the body of a giant man made of lawn furniture. “What an idiot,” I said, but I couldn’t be sure if I meant Neil Howie or the villagers. 

Years later, I learned that when Britt Ekland smacked her ass in my favorite scene, it was actually a body double: Lorraine Peters, a nightclub dancer from Glasgow. 

After watching the The Wicker Man, while kissing on the rough fabric of the couch, I told James I wasn’t ready for sex after he unbuttoned my jeans. But what I really meant was that I was embarrassed for him to see me naked and the duplicitousness of my body; I was no Britt Ekland, and I had no access to a replacement body. My shell was not as it appeared. He told me, “I’m not used to being the one who pursues someone,” his hand resting on my stomach and still I shied away. He said, “Okay,” to my silence in response and left; the closing of the door was a hammering bass note. The desires I carried inside my chest returned to the melting fire of a dying day. The music from the menu played in his absence as I sat there. 

I would have pulled apart my skin and slipped out of the covering to uncloak someone beautiful underneath. I would have burned every limb, with my fingertips as the wick, and melted insides with the kindle-hair to step outside myself virginally anew, glowing with worthiness. Instead, I gathered the extra parts of myself in my arms and held them tenderly in the wave of a want of love. 

The Fool

Fools are born from desperation, trying to grow fruit trees on pavement, never bothering to search the earth below. I was an orange grove that wouldn’t mature, shallowing in dirt baths and dying as a seed. Rejection changed my form into multiple doubles during a summer of desperation, me but not me. The morning after James left, I tied my sapling self to stronger boughs, peaty with the taste of smoke growing stronger. I filled my mouth with acrid bottom-shelf beverages and crowned myself with wreathes of stank smoke, sitting outside next to strangers I wouldn’t say I liked to meet but decided upon anyway. The familiar feeling of discomfort can be very soothing. I sacrificed myself, bored and drunk, to the bodies of people who were shedding and splintering bark more than humans. 

I thought of James whenever I was in the anchored basement, pressed on the scratchy fabric of the shitty couch. If I squinted hard enough, I could imagine he was there. But when I exhumed the grave of the bodies weighing me down, the coffin of their bodies contained only the carcass of a brief visitor. In the early AM, the ghost of James was gone, and only water-colored fingerprints on my shoulders or thighs remained. 

Growing Fruit of My Own Free Will 

Summers in Mid-Atlantic suburbs were islands with trees no longer fruiting. The soup of the sky pressed down, so much weight pound-for-pound against every living thing. And the density of the swelter was inescapable. 

Every box-shaped house inhabitant watered flowers that died long ago, and no golden boughs or wicker friends would bring the blooms back to life. I sat fallow and grey as the season deepened, a late August gloom, where I spent entire days in front of a fan in the basement apartment, watering myself from the outside in. 

The wilted recollections of revolving bodies were left in red sanguine tally marks on a corner of the studio apartment’s wall. Smudged and cave-ancient, I counted the blurry checks to waste time before erupting from the home during coal-colored nights once the heat broke with the sunset. 

Why do we water flowers that have already died? 

In the absence of shade, I grew trees to shelter under, like how the pagans on the island developed strains of fruit trees that would grow in unforgiving climates. In the summoning of temporary bedside-gods every few nights in the sinking humidity of the months, these strangers brought the prosperity that comes with confidence. In the morning, when they were gone, and I checked off their existence, I felt the bounty of the harvest and understood how inhabitants could embrace sacrifice to gain the comfort of plentitude. 

Escaping the heat during the last week of the unbearable summer, I ran into James at the same bar I had haunted for months after we watched The Wicker Man. An indoor arboretum, where I collected a forest throughout the silence of the season. The bar glowed blue and bounced off the sheen of the smoothed wood; James’s face was illuminated, half-human in the light. 

I asked to sit next to him while gesturing to the empty stool, and he smiled wide when he recognized me. His eyes burned like sapphires, eerie as flaming orbs in the dark. I hoisted myself up to sit. The white linen dress I wore scooted up my legs. 

His elegant piano fingers gripped sweating glasses of beer, and the bottom of my thighs sweated in swampy pools as I shifted on the glossy bar chair. The limp ponytail stuck to my neck as I craned closer to hear him over the loud noises, tilted closer to his mouth until his breath hit my neck. “How have you been? What’ve you been up to?” 

“Good… not up to anything much.” 

Loud music played around our bodies, the rota of summer songs where their loudness blotted our conversation but were still somehow unintelligible. 

He dipped his head down and sipped some of the yellow-y beer. I touched his knee and asked, “Do you want to go?” closing any distance between us. He nodded, and a strand of black hair fell over his forehead with the motion. 

Lights shone around us in the dim room. It was the glowing burn of a second sunset, illuminating rays in the middle of the night. 

Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/her) is a writer, editor, and salt enthusiast living in Philadelphia. She is the editor of HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, and a former genre editor at Lunch Ticket. She is the author of Better Bones (Thirty West Publishing), Thirst and Frost (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), and Eleven Hundred (Really Serious Literature).

AN APOLOGY TO THE GUY FROM GRINDR WHO I LEFT IN A BAD POSITION

When I was in college in the Midwest, I met this guy on Grindr who picked me up in the middle of the night in his truck and drove me out to an airport hangar. He was in his 30s or 40s. He said he worked cleanup at the hangar which housed all these billionaires’ private jets. He joked we’d have more than enough privacy inside. We fucked underneath the wing of a Dassault Falcon 900. The hangar was so vast our sex noises echoed back in my face like spitting in the wind. When we were done the guy from Grindr was nice enough to drive me back to campus. I was feeling disappointed by how disappointing the sex was considering the unbelievable danger I had just put myself in. The guy from Grindr squeezed my leg and then a deer burst through the windshield. The car shattered into a tree. The pinned deer shrieked to life, kicking out. The guy from Grindr was hysterical in his seat because he couldn’t unbuckle his seatbelt. The limbs of the deer were all bent, unnatural. Don’t judge me, but I got out of the car and started running. I left the guy from Grindr there trapped in his seatbelt, with the deer kicking. He was calling for help. I left him there and ran all the way home. I was in shock, I think. I never got his name. If you’re out there reading this, I want you to know that I’m sorry.

Ian Crutcher Castillo lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work appears in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Farewell Transmission, Necessary Fiction, and SWAMP. 

KURT COBAIN PLAYS THE MARCO POLO MOTEL  

The joke’s been around for ages

but 

the Space Needle doesn’t resemble a syringe

It’s the 3 radio towers as you’re cresting First Hill

at 23rd and Madison

Those are the sky rigs

Kurt wasn’t from Seattle,

he was an outsider

Seattle hates outsiders

Had he hung around Seattle

long enough before blasting skyward

he might’ve figured out

(Seattle hates insiders too)

Sad sack suicide songs

succio in their insouciance and succor 

self-stabbing soliloquies

and silly simple surrenders

to splatter your thoughts on the wall

like a coat of fresh paint

selfish

is the only s word that remains

Maybe if you were an actor

it’d been an easier part to play

but singers ain’t actors

so much as they’re reactors 

and what a message to leave for

the poets of place

to sweep up broke meanings 

along with the fractured

remnants of your skull

But you were an outsider

Not only to Seattle but anywhere

you’d find yourself

so you’d drive here

to the first motel on Aurora

yet blocks away still from where the seediness begins in earnest

As if someone mentioned to you

that Aurora Avenue

is where the red light district was

so you parked outside on its perimeter

thinking that you were actually

in it

Kurt Cobain definitely made the

Space Needle joke 

and probably missed entirely

Seattle’s real syringes in the sky

in his drive down Madison

to his mansion

Michael Crossley spent his youth and young adulthood wandering the continental US looking for freedom and the ghost of punk rock. Crisscrossing the country by thumb and freight train, he stopped long enough in a few cities along the way to begin writing and performing poetry. His newest poetry collection, Book of Ain’t, deals with themes of addiction, suicide, occultism, Washington state, and aging out of the punk scene.

 Bonus Vlad Mag Pick by Brian Alan Ellis: 

THE IMPERMANENCE OF BEING ALIVE

Being alive is weird. One minute, you’re wishful that Santa roams through the night, dropping a bag of stuff at the foot of a dead tree covered in sparkly shit, but by a few years later, you think your mom is a dickhead. And usually, the poor lady was looking out for you. It’s a complicated dance of meat pressed against the bone, of having a pulse, asking yourself about the standards and practices of the used car lot we call life. 

We love people—they die. We hate people, and those ones live with a grasp on the grave better than Keith Richards. When some of us croak, no one shows up except the priest—a sad moment reflecting on a sadder life, all tied to an empty room. Some folks, when they die, the world collectively gasps that we’re no longer sharing the same view of the moon. When the great piano poet Chopin bit the big one in Paris, bells rang from London to Lisbon. When the Prussians found out he’d died, men on a team of horses stormed to the home where the piano he played as a boy was housed—still on their horses, destroyed the piano, pushed it off a balcony (destroying a wall in the process), and let it fall to the street where they lit it on fire. Anyone who dared touch the piano was threatened to be killed, too. His native land of Prussia, which is now modern-day Poland, wasn’t happy he fucked off to Paris to get famous. But, as irony does, Chopin had a dying wish: that while his corpse rests in Paris at Père Lachaise, his heart was to be sawed out and sent back to Warsaw. And it was—it lies encased in a sealed crystal jar, floating in cognac within a pillar in Holy Cross Church, on Krakowskie Przedmieście, one of Warsaw’s main thoroughfares, complete with a sign declaring, “Here rests the heart of Frederick Chopin.” 

I think about death daily. I’m a dishwater Buddhist. I try to follow dharma. I believe karma isn’t some bank you collect and deposit from. But ultimately, I’m scared of the great beyond. I’m okay with that. I don’t know what exists beyond the moral plane, but I do my best to ensure that I’ll at least have a good seat in the heavenly stands, watching whatever version of Jimi Hendrix plays to the stars. 

What I don’t believe in is haunted houses or ghosts. My logic is simple: why does it have to be old stuff? Why aren’t there any new ghosts? Why does every story have to be about some betrayed house maiden catching her husband banging his big titty mistress? Why aren’t hospitals haunted? Why don’t we have animal ghosts? Ghost lore has too many plot holes for everyday people. But there was a time when, as much as my rational brain tried to make sense of it, I couldn’t. 

My grandmother died when I was sixteen. I called her Grammie. She was my mom’s mom. No disrespect to my parents, but that grandparent-first-grandchild relationship is special. I made a beeline for her place for the first fifteen years at her Canaryville house on Chicago’s south side. It was awesome. I ate whatever I wanted, rented movies like Terminator 2, listened to Nirvana cassettes, and was never enforced bedtime. I adored her. But then she had a heart attack. And then another one. And then she got ovarian cancer. And then she was gone at fifty-four years old. (My mom had me at eighteen, about to turn nineteen.) Our family structure suffered; things felt bleak for a long time. I wasn’t alone in my worship of her. The neighborhood flooded with people saying “so long and goodbye” at her services. People loved her universally, and why wouldn’t they? She was fun and cool. She was of the generation that went to the sock hops, loved rock and roll, and called it “her music” until she was gone. I had a grandmother into the Beatles and The Rolling Stones; everyone else’s gram, certified old ladies, dug Lawrence Welk.

Her being gone has always been an albatross around my neck, my “time machine moment.” If I could find a way to say, “Go to the doctor sooner,” or tell her something that could change the outcome, I’d pick that over saving the dinosaurs or Kennedy—sorry, Jack, you stay in the dirt nap. I’d asked my Aunt Kay, her sister and our matriarch, if she’d be proud of me. 

I’d been day drinking at my friend Luna’s place. When the liquor dried, we drove to mine. Throughout the rest of the night, we partied in my kitchen, acting a fool. Luna is a Mexican from California but has lived in Texas forever. Swapping stories, she mentioned that her family comes from a long line of brujas—Mexican witches. That she felt things, experienced stuff that she couldn’t explain, that she was tapped into another energy. I brushed this off as pure bullshit. I do not believe in spookiness, especially in a house in the middle-class part of north Austin. 

We began to talk about the ones we lost. Preston, my roommate and best friend, lost his dad young; Luna lost people, too. I mentioned Grammie. And within a moment, she turned to me as if all the booze drained from her body, sober as a judge: “Oh, she’s here. She’s always watching. She’s your guardian.” I laughed. I laughed hard. But then a smoke detector hard-wired into the wall that had never gone off in the five years of living in that house went the fuck off. Not like a simple beep, but like a holy-shit-there’s-a-fire-in-here for about ten seconds. “Told you so. She’s always with you.” And that fire alarm has never beeped since. I still don’t believe in ghosts. There’s probably a logical explanation. But, while my run in the mortal realm is brief against time, I hope people love me enough to let me haunt their alarms, too. Or at least they promise to cut my heart out and throw it on the owners of the Chicago White Sox’s desk as revenge for sucking. It’s what Grammie would have wanted. She was a south-side gal.

Robert Dean is a journalist, raconteur, and enlightened dumbass. His work has been featured in places like MIC, Eater, Fatherly, Yahoo, Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, Consequence of Sound, Ozy, USA Today, to name a few. He’s appeared on CNN and NPR. He also serves as features writer for Culture Clash, The Cosmic Clash, and Pepper Magazine, and is editor-in-chief for Big Laugh Comedy, Texas’ premier comedy production company. He lives in Austin, TX, and loves ice cream and koalas. His collection of essays, Existential Thirst Trap, is out now. 

10 TOTALLY AWESOME STAY-AT-HOME ACTIVITIES TO DO WITH YOUR SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED VLAD MAG GUEST EDITOR KRIS HALL

1. Make a Spa Day

Your sexually transmitted Kris Hall enjoys being pam­pered as much as you do, so why not plan a relaxing day of gluttonous bullshit? Deep-tissue massages. Avocado skin cleansers. Essential oils. Epsom salt baths. Sterilize, revitalize, and remember: It’s nice to be kneaded!

2. Have a Video Game Marathon

You’re a loser who loves playing Xbox anyway, so why not work your sexually transmitted Kris Hall into the fray? Let’s face it: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is the only action you and your sexually transmitted Kris Hall should be getting, so make the best of it! Just don’t get too competitive, or cocky, or angry. Your sexually transmitted Kris Hall doesn’t like that shit. Never has.

3. Stage a Photo Shoot

Dress up like you and your sexually transmitted Kris Hall are headed to Comic-Con, or just wear whatever is scattered around your shitty apartment. Paint your faces like members of Insane Clown Posse? Fuck yes. Capture the memo­ries. Wave around that ol’ selfie-stick. Make it super awkward by separately posting profiles of you and your sexually transmitted Kris Hall on Tinder to see who gets the most matches. Hell, vide­otape your sexually transmitted Kris Hall. Make your sexually transmitted Kris Hall into a TikTok star. Get YouTube hits. Profit off of your sexually transmitted Kris Hall. Dang it, it’s the least they could do.

4. Develop a Workout Routine

Just kidding.

5. Have a Movie Marathon

Don’t think your sexually transmitted Kris Hall likes to “Netflix and chill”? You’re out of your dang mind! Your sexually transmitted Kris Hall is a known movie buff, a real Rogey Ebey. In fact, your sexually transmitted Kris Hall probably digs Cronen­berg—so long live the new flesh!

6. Build a Fort

Remember building pillow forts as a kid, when you were young and innocent, possibly Kris Hall-free? Chan­nel that inner bastard by making your domicile one killer adult fort—with none other than your favorite sexually transmitted Krizzy! Pop in some TV dinners, chillax on the taped-up beanbag chair you’ve had since college, and just chat the night away about your various omissions and regrets before crying yourself into deep slumber. Your sexually transmitted Kris Hall won’t mind.

7. Start a Band

It’s time to dust off that acoustic guitar with the miss­ing bottom E string you’ve had since middle school. See if you can remember the opening chords to Stone Temple Pilots “Plush,” or try finally nailing that hot “Man Who Sold the World” lead you used to struggle with while watching MTV’s Nirvana Unplugged spe­cial. See if you still got the chops. Your sexually transmitted Kris Hall might be a slow learner, so have patience—maybe start with “Louie, Louie,” before working your way up to “Smoke on the Water.” Keep at it. Chances are, you and your sexually transmitted Kris Hall will be slaying the open mic night cir­cuit in no time.

8. Design a Scrapbook

Make a scrapbook of that horrible vacation you and your sexually transmitted Kris Hall took to Machu Picchu. Perhaps use it to trace the lineage of how you and your sexually transmitted Kris Hall first met, which could have been any one of those times you put your genitals where they probably shouldn’t have been. So sit back and reminisce. Maybe show the scrapbook to friends and family. Or, just treas­ure it as a special keepsake between you and your sexually transmitted Kris Hall. No pressure.

9. Get to Know Your Sexually Transmitted Kris Hall Better

All relationships hit a wall after a while. Sure, every day with your sexually transmitted Kris Hall is an education, but dig deeper, move things around a little, shake it up. Ask your sexually transmitted Kris Hall what superpower they’d want if they could just have one. Or, find out which 100 gecs hyper-pop banger they’d choose to send their dream Spotify playlist into molly-fueled overdrive. Who’s their favorite Teen­age Mutant Ninja Turtle? Would they rather drink a bowl of cat vomit or lick the anus of a dead hobo? Dang it, just have fun with it!

10. Throw a Party

Why not have some friends over for cocktails and laughs? Doesn’t matter whether your pals are mar­ried or if they’re Kris Hall-single and ready to mingle—everyone’s invited! Karaoke? You bet. Cards Against Humanity? Whoa, slow down there—let’s just see where the night takes us, okay? Chips and dips. Truth or Dare. Spin the Bottle. Heck, your sexually transmitted Kris Hall is for sharing—so make it an orgy!

Brian Alan Ellis runs House of Vlad Press and Vlad Mag, and is the author of several books, including Sad Laughter (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2018) and Hobbies You Enjoy. His writing has appeared at Juked, Hobart, Fanzine, Mon­keybicycle, Elec­tric Literature, Forever, X-R-A-Y, Heavy Feather Review, and Yes Poetry, among many other places. He lives in Florida. 

SQUIRREL PROBLEM

My neighbor’s new vape looks an awful lot like cigarettes, but he swears up and down they’re just designed this way now. I don’t press because every time I step out of my apartment, he’s there, standing over the edge of our shared railing, chain-smoking his vape and glaring at me with the kind of disdain I’d personally reserve for someone who had actually wronged me. I say “hey,” and he nods.

Eyes like knives on the back of my head as I take the steps down to the ground level, but it’s the least of my concerns because there’s a whole-ass hole in my wall that I have to repair myself using only the YouTube tutorials my brother-in-law sent me titled “Zaddy’s Girl Fix It Sesh.” Last time I tried to contact my landlord about a problem in the building he responded with lose my number so I’m really on my own here. 

Squirrels spent the past couple of evenings fucking with my dog, telling her she’s a bad girl and rabies is a good thing to contract. It’s the hole, I know it is, even if I didn’t see anything pass through beyond cold air on a cold night. Did catch one of those lil fuckers running a jacuzzi in my garbage disposal round midnight and thought about hitting the switch to turn it to mist but considered the repercussions of blood and guts splattering my clean white tile and I just let it be. Life has a way of working out.

The patch job looks shoddy. At least that’s what Rick tells me while he vapes on the sidewalk in front of my house, leaning on a car that’s neither mine or his, eyes up and focused for a view of any fault that could further the divide between us. “Oh thanks,” I reply, not caring much beyond its ability to stop the squirrels. He ashes his vape on the ground. You should call the landlord, he tells me. I show him our messages and he laughs. Not much you can do about that. 

Shared commiseration is a fast-track to friendship and we start regularly playing War late into the night as the seasons shift back to warmer, and the draft isn’t so bad anymore. He somehow always wins, Ace vs King and the like. He asks if he can smoke in here. Fuck if I care. 

KKUURRTT is glad you read his thing. He’s on the internet.  

LIKE I SAID BEFORE
 

if you can name three reasons I should stop

then maybe I will think about it

the water pressure 

from the neighbor’s shower 

roars louder 

than television

these are the times I envision the woods

red gingham curtains frame my face 

perfectly coiffed side bangs

as I gaze into an endless prairie 

above and below 

and too far ahead

what is one promise 

you make when 

you know my only fantasy

is the easy way out 

of an ordinary nightmare 

watercolor drips from fingers to wrists 

stains my shirt sleeves 

as I busy myself illustrating 

a better version of myself, of you, 

of every mishap we find ourselves in 

 
pictures painted of every question 

that stumbles within our throats

poems for my regrets 

and pointless fictions

spun around my body, 

glued in a webbing 

that doesn’t suit me 

or make sense 

what does the last day 

of our reality look like 

if this is the best I can muster 

what terror will slip 

into me seamlessly 

and start wearing me around next

Alexandra Naughton is the author of ten poetry collections. Her first novel, American Mary, won the 2015 Mainline contest by Civil Coping Mechanisms and was published in 2016. Her work has been featured in Dusie, Sporklet, sin cesar, dream boy book club, Maudlin House, carte blanche, and elsewhere. She is currently seeking representation for her second novel. Check out her newsletter, Talk About It, on Substack.  

SOLIDARITY!

I sat on the toilet and waited and waited and waited. And eventually… nothing happened. 

The neighbors got worried and called the cops and the cops came to the door and banged on the door. 

I screamed from the bathroom, “I’m not home right now, just leave it on the doorstep!” 

The cops called in a specialist who’s dealt with situations like this and is also a close, personal friend of mine. The cops called my close, personal friend, Keanu Reeves. 

Keanu pushed the button on my Ring and the Ring went ding-dong and sent a notification to my phone. I opened the Ring app and there was Keanu’s face filling up the screen on my phone. 

Keanu asked, “David, what’s going on in there, man?”

I said, “I glued my ass to the toilet seat, Keanu Reeves.” 

Keanu scratched his black beard and said, “Yeah, that sounds bad.” 

I told him it wasn’t all bad. I told him a lot of people have it a lot worse than I do. But figuring out how to eat and bathe and sleep comfortably was kind of a bitch. I told him I haven’t been able to feel my legs in a few days. 

Keanu Reeves asked how long my ass had been glued to the toilet seat. I told him the truth. I told him that I’m about to lose my house because I can’t afford to pay the rent or my electric bill or my gas bill or my grocery bill or my cell phone bill or my anything bill. But this is my home and this toilet is my favorite place in my home and goddammit if they’re going to kick me out of my home, they’re gonna have to unglue my ass from my toilet seat first. I told him I didn’t really think it all through. 

Keanu didn’t say a word. He just turned around and talked to the cops and he and the cops left. An hour later, Keanu texted me and told me to check Instagram. So I did. And I saw that Keanu had started an Instagram and already had a billion followers and was live. I joined his Instagram live. 

Keanu was at home. He’d glued his own ass to his toilet too. He gave a really long speech about inequality and people starving and some other shit too. He asked everyone to join him and glue their asses to their toilet seats. A million hearts filled the screen and comments cascaded down saying things like: 

Yeah! 

Fuck yeah! 

We with u, Kean! 

I already glue my ass 4 I! 

Solidarity!

And so everyone did as Keanu said and glued their asses to their toilet seats. They didn’t work or go to school or buy shit online or pay their bills or eat junk food or anything. We sat on the toilet and waited and waited and waited. And finally… something happened. 

The billionaires who ran the country and the rest of the world went insane and started killing themselves. By the dozens they died or disappeared. The money left behind from all the billionaires was burned up in a great big fire that lit up the whole sky so everyone on earth could see it.

We unglued our asses from our toilets and stepped out into the beauty of this new world. We did drugs and had sex and cured cancer and ended wars and brought back all of our favorite television shows that were unjustly canceled. And no one died ever again. 

D.T. Robbins is the author of Birds Aren’t Real (Maudlin House) and Leasing (forthcoming from House of Vlad Press). 

PLEASURE SIGNALS

He had banana-colored hair and a banana-shaped face and a banana-shaped chest and a banana-shaped dick and the skateboard he rode was also like a banana and the birthmark on the side of his neck was almost a banana but more like a plum. I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me, but he wanted to know if there was truth to the rumor that we had an orgy house.

It was summer and we had time. I lived with my boyfriend Fabio on the first floor of a rundown Victorian. He drank and worked in a bookstore, in that order. He drummed and smoked hand rolled Drum cigarettes. 

“I don’t know why anyone would want to talk to him,” my ex said to me a year before. “He is always stoned, who knows what other drugs he’s on. He’s also bisexual. I saw him with his arm around a man from Africa. He might have aids from Africa!” 

I wasn’t expecting to be with Fabio intimately, but I had a dream one night that we ate an enormous pot of curry and made love. So I duplicated the dream, and everything after this made sense.

We had sex, so much sex that people started to show up at the house to be a part of our sex. We spent more hours of a week having sex than working or eating or sleeping. There were noises I’d never made before. We could be motionless, feel a yellow tide of euphoria wash over our bodies. At times we moved outside of our skins and floated in the ether. Sex was our religion. 

Men and women joined us, and some could cut it and some sulked in corners and there was a blonde with nipples as wide as flying saucers and thighs on top of her thighs.

Banana Boy came along after a number of boys. We drank wine with Banana Boy until the night we knew he wanted more. It was midnight and he still hadn’t left. The candles were lit in a kitchen coated with bean drippings and spilled wine and my boyfriend got out an album he bought at a garage sale. Two explorers on the cover crossed a desert and every sand dune was part of a naked woman whose body went on to the horizon.

Fabio played album. It was called Pleasure Signals. It was awful, a jazz-fusion that galloped and had cowbells and sax solos that sagged like tattered lace. 

We lit candles. Fabio got out the dagger. He slit his wrist and made a pile on the kitchen floor of candle wax and his blood and rich red wine and handed the hunting knife to me to do the same.

I wiped the blade and pricked the tip of my finger. I added a single drop to the mound of candle wax and blood. I handed the knife to Banana Boy and he looked at it and paused. 

Fabio chanted, “Plea-sure signals, plea-sure signals,” and I joined him.

As we chanted, Banana Boy made the cut.

Then we went to the bed, and we fucked until dawn but Fabio was upset because Banana Boy only wanted me and Banana Boy left before the sun got too high in the sky.

We didn’t see him for weeks, but the rumors got back to us. Banana Boy thought we were evil wizards. We had put a spell on him. For weeks he could not go to his classes. He broke down in tears to his girlfriend, and we ended up acting excessively nice to him to get him to calm down. 

I will never forget the afternoon where we went to a bongo drum store with Banana Boy and roamed around aimlessly caressing the dead skins stretched on wood, dead skins, caress, caress, a gentle tap, until Banana Boy decided we were kind of innocent after all, in the light of day in a bongo drum store while a man in a Rasta hat played Bob Marley on a stereo as if there was a first time for everything. 

I regret going to the bongo store to make the boy who felt I was a sex wizard feel better. Wizards live without regrets, therefore I am not a wizard.

(Or am I?)

(a skinned beast waiting to happen)

I am your Lady Dandy

your ragtime apparition

I write Moon on my hand with the ash of a burnt twig

quantum tunnel to my cunt

I entrain thee

I dream of your legs flying through the air and making a clapping noise, hard plastic machinations like novelty teeth from a long-gone magic store,

black hair wrapped around my thumbs

Remember magic stores?

Remember David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear?

Let our platelets rub together, curtains the color of 

dried blood, let us fester in a petri dish, 

gluttons for ignition, we

‘Back zipper entry’ just sounds so good

Whisper to me how you will do it, 

end it all, omphalos, 

Apophis, comet that shatters Earth

saw me in half, I will

write odes to your blades

still I have that paper fallen from a vending machine:

‘Songs will be written about your beauty’

I have never cried so much in one year, we 

are disposable as the tide

mercurial as a child’s eye in the toy aisle 

It was really a ‘hide the vibrators’ moment

I was four

I did the dance of the seven veils in front of 

my grandmother’s dresser mirror 

I would jump, naked! 

Not even a rubber band in my hair!

No Miraculous Medal of Mary on my neck—

I am a lover of the unrepentant bush,

one of my pubic hairs is four inches long

Must I even wear flesh? I, in thrall 

to your geometries, wear 

my blood on your face, 

dissolve me, steal my bones

hide them where I’ll never find them

I write bedtime stories for feral cats

six feet long and snarling

I drink mirror oil:

Enough to make you real

Jennifer Robin is braless and lawless. You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury, her book of dreams about celebrities and apocalypse, was released by Far West in 2022. A collection of vignettes about foot fetishists, nuns, French swingers, and her mother, There Must Be an Invisible Leash, will be out on Future Tense in 2024. Her 2024 Oblique Strategies release—The Ballad of Ecto-Five—is an “erotic novel of mad science” featuring Mother Earth’s Avenger and his “girl gang.” They’re really groovy, babes.

WATER SIGN WATERWORKS

My manicured nails mold meters into miles, 

erotic excursions consume 

the expectation of what is 

a dick?

A dick. 

I have failed you,

belittling barstools

burrowing in bedrooms. 

The night beckons before I can bring a truth.

Can we just go to the bodega,

sip slurpies instead of licking house keys? 

The drugs fucking suck. 

Snow snuffs the surface of critical conclusions,

stealing the serenity of a semi-adult,

yearning for acceptance 

appeasing a half-adapted adolescent. 

We cannot point pinky fingers in resentment.

As I continue hoarding happiness,

you conceive momentary release. 

A jury without a judge serves no purpose, 

a tale with no ending, 

yayed out. 

Stories bring anxiety, 

aggravated assumptions I admit admits dreams. 

Fucked-up snot

runs down your fucked-up face

poorly composed as you croak broken vowels. 

We trusted each other.

I am exhausted. 

My aunt,

my mother,

lipstick lines the lips, 

stains of generational grief 

garnishing girlish glares. 

A weary welcome to womanhood.

You’re not stupid.

Silent side eyes suppress the truth,

aware that growth is a cunt. 

Cut me off.

Don’t be a sack of shit. 

A simp is a simp

conforming to statistics. 

Who cares for me?

What the fuck?

Beanie season, unshaven,

unkempt. 

You won’t fuck me. 

Sex is disgusting.

Please me without any pleasure.

How do 

you know me so well? 

You have grown to see me for who I was

but who am I really?

Paragraphs purposefully phrased into stanzas. 

I need a lobotomy.

Crack the skull,

cut the cortex

starving for a serving of reality,

amidst the idea of what could or should be. 

A deep breath,

lines of consciousness, 

clarity. 

Spider legs for eyelashes, 

sewing kits for fingertips. 

Knuckles knead nightmares,

images of wishes we’ve wanted.

Imagination impeaches integrity. 

You hate hearing my slurred speech. 

Bitchy body language gives it away.

I’ll buy you a beverage to make up for lost time. 

Everything my posture portrays is a lie. 

The most “humble” person around. 

Speak what you want.

I’ll believe what you preach.

It’s poison to talk to me about it. 

The day is done, winter solstice,  

we all deal with the same shit. 

I hate it,

and you.

I’m not trying to.

Our collaboration could be so beneficial, so beautiful, though the reality is not there. 

I’d be a damn good mom.

Someday.

I love you. 

Devany Robinett is the spawn of alley fairies, fourth generation of topless beach bum hippies, an Everett heiress born from old money monopoly. Her writing reflects the hardship that shapes a person coming of age in a digital generation. Valuing the simplicity of spinning records, typing on Underwoods with acrylic fingertips, and hating female archetypes while buttering wheat bread for wretched men. She was published by Three Frogs Swimming press in 2023, introducing her book Ode to Orange Cats and Shitty Men. She is also cohost of Chatrooms open mic at Lucky Dime, located in Everett, Washington, on 1618 Hewitt. 

 ALAN DUGAN’S PENIS

The dead poet Alan Dugan didn’t publish

His first book until he was over 40, past

The age limit for the Yale prize. He was no

Longer considered younger, but someone

Looked kindly on him and his possibly crooked

Member. Alan Dugan’s penis is a subject

Of much concern in the poems

Of Alan Dugan. If he were alive today, he’d

Have certainly been canceled, but maybe

He’s grandfathered in because he most

Certainly cut a grandfatherly figure, and he

Possessed a cutting wit of the sort that tends

To mitigate indiscretion. If you believe

His oeuvre, he was often aroused, often

In public, at cocktail parties, academic 

And artistic mixers, even into his old age,

Always speaking of his hard-on, often 

In despairing tones. In the photograph 

On the cover of his last collection, he looks

A little like a penis, which is in no way meant

As a form of disrespect but as an observation

About how life imitates art, like the way 

A beloved dog begins to resemble his owner.

I don’t know much more about this great

Poet’s cock, but he sure liked to talk about it

A lot, and therefore must have been very fond

Of it but a little embarrassed, like the father

In the parable of the Prodigal Son. 

We can’t help but love what belongs to us completely.

Anthony Robinson lives in rural Oregon and is the author of Failures of the Poets (Canarium Books, 2023). 

THE BLOCK AMBIANCE

Rain settles to

pooling in the over-

sized clay pot

where the bodega

dude “planted”

a plastic fern

cause I told him

the block had no

ambiance. He’ll water 

it again at 6am, preen 

its waxy leaves, but 

tonight synthetic 

drowning sets the tone. 

What surprise is there in 

angry overflow? 

The city is rigid in that way. 

The cloistered always rise. 

Soil clumps ride the steady 

streaks falling down 

soaked terracotta sides

to reconvene on concrete,

carrying sustenance 

roots and skin thirst for. 

An emergency alert 

squawks from my pocket

like the producer tag on a mix-

tape of the most mind-

bending bars that can’t pass 

copyright laws, destined 

to survive isolated on hard-

drives enjoyed only by 

those who saw the scene 

before it became scarce.

Alex Wells Shapiro (he/him) is a poet, artist, and organizer from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He serves as Poetry Editor for Another Chicago Magazine, and co-curates Exhibit B: A Literary Variety Show. He is the author of a poetry collection, Insect Architecture (Unbound Edition, 2022), and a chapbook, Gridiron Fables (Bottlecap Features, 2022).  

BODY: RESERVED FOR SHARP THINGS

My stomach, 

empty in anticipation for someone to be there, 

little bugs, 

they crush to make the skittles, red.

I’ve done anal 

but I’ve never done the poppers,

Have you ever seen a junkie

that was so beautiful you considered crawling into the slush for them?

I want the flesh of his flesh to fill the weeping hole inside me,

maybe if they were lucky 

when the frostbite came and went and came and went 

I would lay there 

NyQuil wearing off,

using my body to shield you from the sounds that may disturb you.

I think I’d be loved enough to fill the overflow lot of a funeral home,

and if I died near them because I am romantic,

they might be commissioned to sing opera at my memorial.

It would be poetic injustice for anyone else to get inspired off my non-embalmed body,

melted, and finally now 

imperfect for the first time ever.

there might be a film of the last time you saw my face 

cascading over every moment that you walk through,

every painting I threw out and everyone you kept hanging on your wall,

so I wonder if you’ve loved anyone besides me,

and if I have loved anyone besides me,

I guess being beautiful and cold,

was never enough 

I don’t even defrost the car, 

let alone your body which rides for free.

Abalone on roller skates:

don’t be embarrassed that I’m always wearing a helmet and condoms.

Sure, I dream about dying, 

but I don’t want to do it yet.

Jude Stratis is a painter and poet residing in Everett, Washington.

THE AUTHOR

I met The Author for lunch at a table near the window. We were with his Publicist who ordered Pad Thai and fried dumplings. I ordered soup with braised beef and The Author had his with seafood—shrimp, scallops, and calamari. 

I didn’t bring up the book at lunch and neither did his Publicist. She was from Massachusetts, an hour from where I grew up, and before she became a publicist, she worked at a diner. She said it was her job to make toast, and I thought that was crazy; the diner was so incredibly busy that someone’s job was to make toast. I pictured conveyor belts with heated coils sending the toast onto endless plates, accompanied by small packets of butter and jellies so the cooks were freed up to address the griddle and smoke cigarettes near the back door. 

Our server came over to refill my tea and the Author asked me about a movie. It was an underground film, but I don’t recall the name. I told them both how I thought it was important to see those kinds of movies, to cleanse. “Detox,” I said. The Author appreciated the sentiment and folded his hands, nudged me to elaborate. 

I began to explain but something was happening outside the window. A man across the street in skinny jeans and a fake leather jacket was spitting up in the gutter.

I kept splitting my focus between the window and The Author and his Publicist in a tryptic blur of places to direct my attention. So, I focused on the man across the street, but The Author was still waiting, looking over his steaming bowl of shrimp and Bok choy.

“Sorry,” I said, “there’s a man over there who just threw up, I think.”

We all looked out the window—Me, The Author, and his Publicist—just as the man began spewing into the street again. We all smiled. He continued a few more times, noiselessly throwing up, holding his phone in one hand pressed against his leg as he leaned over the curb, and we wondered if he was still on a call and joked about the people we knew who would take a call while puking. “Something in my throat,” The Author said.

Then the man across the street finished and walked off nonplussed.

The Author looked back at us, unaffected by the incident, and said: There’s something about vomit that makes you wonder about the possibilities.

The Publicist chuckled, possibly nervously, but I sensed there was more, so I waited. He continued: There’s something there. I think about how it could have just been something random, a stomach virus or something, and suddenly, walking down the street, he has to stop and vomit. Then, he’s fine. A few hours later, he goes home, he talks with his sweetheart, mentioning it in passing. “You know, the strangest thing happened. I was walking down the street and I felt like I was going to throw up. And I did! A few minutes later I was all right. It didn’t happen again the rest of the day.” But then it does happen again, and his sweetheart starts to get worried. She calls the doctor, and they find some rare condition and his life is never the same. He’s on medications, has to watch what he eats, can’t keep weight on, etc. etc. But then there is the other side of it. Maybe this guy is on dope. He’s been clean, but he messed up, started using again. He throws up, we all saw that, but then he goes home, and again he tells his sweetheart, “You know the craziest thing happened, I was walking down the street and I just threw up on the curb a few times and then was okay the rest of the day.” His sweetheart doesn’t say anything, but immediately the alarms are going off. She knew he used to have a drug problem, but she doesn’t want to be insensitive, so, she keeps her mouth shut, until it happens again. He’s throwing up in the bathroom, she can hear it, and later that day, on the couch, she confronts him. “Why would I throw up if I was using? If I threw up from that it would mean I was withdrawing, meaning I had stopped using. If I was using before then, you would’ve known.” He says this as if it is unrebukable. But in her head she’s already going through the math, the calculations, and explanations. Now, maybe he was using, and then a few weeks later, he does too much of something laced with fentanyl and ODs in her bathroom. Or possibly he wasn’t doing drugs, and it was just a freak thing, almost like a phantom puke, but it’s already tainted the relationship. He sees how easily she jumps to accusing him of using, and she realizes how little she trusts him. They break up, still friends, but both try not to see each other more than they have to. 

The bill came and The Publicist paid. I said thank you, and The Author put his hands together and bowed his head slightly.

On the way out, a large group from Penn Station walked in through the door. We waited and laughed with the host, watching as they kept coming in, one after another, a seemingly endless parade of Chinese students. The man sitting on the bench near the door said, “Only a hundred more.” I smiled. 

When we were outside, The Author said, “Did you see that sign in the restaurant? It read: Welcome, Wuhan Institute for Virology Interns.”

“Really?” asked The Publicist.

“No,” said The Author.

We laughed. We were close to where the puking took place, but the mess was long gone, mixed in with everything else and the air felt good in my lungs.

Stephan Zguta is a bourgeois white-collar worker who is writing to you from New York City. 

BIG BITE

seat cushion

asphalt

bag of peanuts

heat

gas station coffee

improvised stretching

the pauses, the deep breath

afraid of being left behind

like a rapture theologian

at a fake university

two weeks without

ashes of the thought

of death

or any great paranoia

i’m feeling overwarm under covers tonight

i take a big bite of sweet honeycomb candy 

not caring about weight gain

any condition of my body

but the night gets me in this weird way 

and i fear

like when i held you on the yellow sport 

bike the hill country blurring

converting kilometers

i prepared to die

decapitated

or turned into some boneless worm

on a picturesque Croatian hillside

it is like the opening credits

of every movie i watched

before age ten

the scary thing

the thing you can’t say anything about 

having to pee when you’re driving alone

Gregory Zorko was born in 1990, in upstate New York. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the author of Ghost in the Club (Metatron Press, 2016) and Chirp (Ursus Americanus Press, 2018).

KRIS HALL (aka Barracuda Guarisco; C.C. Hannett) is the author of several collections of poetry and hybrid works published by Spuyten Duyvil, Vegetarian Alcoholic, Really Serious Literature, Feral Dove Books, Voice Lux, Alien Buddha, and Chat Rooms. Widely published in journals, online and in print, they have also been nominated for Best Microfiction and The Elgin Award. Their latest book, Post-Mortem Dance Fever, is out now. They currently reside in Everett, WA.