Featured Finalists
It was difficult deciding upon 3 winners out of our 10 dope finalists. Stoked on the quality of the submissions we received, we wanted to provide some more spotlight on the cats who stood out of the crowd. Below we've featured our 7 finalists who definitively deserve your eyes & ears.
It Felt Like Worship : FRANCESCA Kritikos
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BIO:
Francesca Kritikos was born & raised in Chicago. She currently studies literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Her poetry has appeared or will appear in Witch Craft, Fur-Lined Ghettos, Alien Mouth, Lighthouse Journal, Little River, & more. |
THE GODDESS
i’m no beauty
but i’m prettier than your wife
and she won’t bite your lips like i do
so it hurts
more than it feels good but
you keep letting it happen
you always keep letting me happen
darling, the enabler’s hands are never clean
and she won’t be soft and broken
she has to pick the way mothers always do
i can do both
i’m warm if you don’t push in too deep
i’m whole if you don’t notice the scratches and
fruitripe abscesses just beneath my skin
i’m the goddess of being hit too hard
and still breathing
look at me and let me say
You poor thing
You poor thing
and believe that i’m talking about you when
i’m talking about me
i’m always talking about me
but i’m prettier than your wife
and she won’t bite your lips like i do
so it hurts
more than it feels good but
you keep letting it happen
you always keep letting me happen
darling, the enabler’s hands are never clean
and she won’t be soft and broken
she has to pick the way mothers always do
i can do both
i’m warm if you don’t push in too deep
i’m whole if you don’t notice the scratches and
fruitripe abscesses just beneath my skin
i’m the goddess of being hit too hard
and still breathing
look at me and let me say
You poor thing
You poor thing
and believe that i’m talking about you when
i’m talking about me
i’m always talking about me
Predictions : CTCH BUSINESS
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BIO:
Catch Business is the author of GHOST GFS (Electric Cereal, 2015) and ABLE TO / ALWAYS WILL (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) as well as the chapbook Bye, Product (Be About It, 2015). She is the Founding Poetry Editor of Witch Craft Magazine and Chapbook Coordinator at Sad Spell Press. |
UPCOMING POEMS
Poems by Ctch are forthcoming in Issue #012 of Fuck Art, Let's Dance, so you're going to have to wait to dig in with this finalist ;)
I AM A___ : Jackson NIEUWLAND
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BIO: Jackson Nieuwland likes unicorns. They are the editor of LEFT.
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LINKS:
LEFT |
COMPULSIVE LIAR
I am a compulsive liar.
The previous sentence is a lie.
The previous sentence is a lie.
I told my first lie before I was even born.
They did a scan and I told them I was a boy.
I managed to keep that one going for almost 26 years.
When the truth finally came out, I was just as surprised as them.
I had forgotten the truth.
It’s not a lie if you believe it to be true
and some people will believe anything.
Everything I’ve ever said
has been contradicted by something else I’ve said.
There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind.
If no one ever changed their minds
we would all still mentally be babies.
The previous sentence is a lie.
The previous sentence is a lie.
I told my first lie before I was even born.
They did a scan and I told them I was a boy.
I managed to keep that one going for almost 26 years.
When the truth finally came out, I was just as surprised as them.
I had forgotten the truth.
It’s not a lie if you believe it to be true
and some people will believe anything.
Everything I’ve ever said
has been contradicted by something else I’ve said.
There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind.
If no one ever changed their minds
we would all still mentally be babies.
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I am 47 years old.
I work 60 hours a week at a chair factory. I stand the whole time. I have six siblings. I enjoy reading. |
That is a lie.
That is a lie. That is a lie. That is a lie. That is a lie. That is a lie. |
Once I took a lie detector test.
It was inconclusive.
It can't tell if you're lying
if you can't tell if you're lying.
Is it a lie if they won't accept ‘I don't
know’ as an answer?
I began lying because I wanted people
to like me.
I didn’t think they would if I told them
the truth.
I lied by agreeing with them.
I wanted to fit in.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
The previous sentence is a lie.
The previous sentence is a lie
It was inconclusive.
It can't tell if you're lying
if you can't tell if you're lying.
Is it a lie if they won't accept ‘I don't
know’ as an answer?
I began lying because I wanted people
to like me.
I didn’t think they would if I told them
the truth.
I lied by agreeing with them.
I wanted to fit in.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
The previous sentence is a lie.
The previous sentence is a lie
Sometimes I Dream of Drowning : MEG EDEN
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BIO:
Meg Eden's work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, and Gargoyle. She teaches at the University of Maryland. She has four poetry chapbooks, and her novel Post-High School Reality Quest is forthcoming from California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Lit. |
LINKS:
Personal Site Contact |
HOKOTASHI CITY, IBARAKI PREFECTURE
The day is gray with the beach
covered in dolphins. Sand
becomes water and water
an uninhabitable place.
People still surf but how can they ignore
the fifty bodies, like tea leaves
at the bottom of a scryer’s glass,
heavy and loud in memorial?
The coast guards carry water
to pour over the bodies.
What do they expect? That the dolphins
will walk back to the ocean?
So many put down. So many
already dead. One by one,
scooped up by the bulldozer
and returned to the ocean.
Can anyone know what will happen
six days from now? Six hours?
On the shore, one body flails against
the others, craving the water
that pulls—killing
and sustaining simultaneously.
covered in dolphins. Sand
becomes water and water
an uninhabitable place.
People still surf but how can they ignore
the fifty bodies, like tea leaves
at the bottom of a scryer’s glass,
heavy and loud in memorial?
The coast guards carry water
to pour over the bodies.
What do they expect? That the dolphins
will walk back to the ocean?
So many put down. So many
already dead. One by one,
scooped up by the bulldozer
and returned to the ocean.
Can anyone know what will happen
six days from now? Six hours?
On the shore, one body flails against
the others, craving the water
that pulls—killing
and sustaining simultaneously.
**previously published in Zo Magazine
Swallowing Shark : Sara Adams
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BIO:
Sara Adams is a Montessori teacher in Portland, Oregon. Her first chapbook Think Like a B is a collection of erasure poems from Donald Trump's book Think Like a Billionaire. She has two other forthcoming chapbooks in 2016: Poems for Ivan (Porkbelly Press) and Western Diseases (dancing girl press). Sara's work appears in publications such as DIAGRAM and Queen Mob's Teahouse. |
But You Haven't
Some time before daylight
In the darkness he loosened
the strain
leaned back and against
the loose ends of the reserve
He worked skillfully with one hand and
his foot as he drew knots
tight
from each he had severed
they were all con-
nected.
After it is light, he thought,
I will have lost two hundred
good leaders.
Aloud he said, “I wish I had.”
But you haven’t. You have
only yourself and you had better work
now, in the dark or not in the dark
In the darkness he loosened
the strain
leaned back and against
the loose ends of the reserve
He worked skillfully with one hand and
his foot as he drew knots
tight
from each he had severed
they were all con-
nected.
After it is light, he thought,
I will have lost two hundred
good leaders.
Aloud he said, “I wish I had.”
But you haven’t. You have
only yourself and you had better work
now, in the dark or not in the dark
The Martian Tends the Tree : David Rawson
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BIO:
David Rawson is the author of A Jellyfish for Every Name and Proximity, both available from ELJ Publications. He would like to say that when he looks at the moon he is thinking of you, but he cannot say for certain. |
LINKS:
Tumblr: @davidallenrawson |
8.
When the martian was a child, he & his brother would chase each other
through a makeshift orchard: evergreens interspersed with apple & plum trees.
One summer, the evergreens bore the wrong fruit:
heavy sacks hung by strings: acrobatic worms crawling up intricate silk.
The bagworms arched their bodies in rhythm.
Hundreds of children within her, the mother does not leave her nest.
She was born into this and has sacrificed herself to the god of no agency.
The mother has no eyes, no mouth, no legs. There are hundreds of children
writhing inside her. She nurtures until the branches die.
Then her children surrender to wind to build their cocoons,
to one day fly in nameless memory.
The martian would camp under the trees, would seal his sleeping bag
over his head until he was left only with the sound of his own breath
& the beating of worm rain against his head.
The martian wonders if he is the moth, the mother, or the tree.
Sometimes we must hollow to survive.
through a makeshift orchard: evergreens interspersed with apple & plum trees.
One summer, the evergreens bore the wrong fruit:
heavy sacks hung by strings: acrobatic worms crawling up intricate silk.
The bagworms arched their bodies in rhythm.
Hundreds of children within her, the mother does not leave her nest.
She was born into this and has sacrificed herself to the god of no agency.
The mother has no eyes, no mouth, no legs. There are hundreds of children
writhing inside her. She nurtures until the branches die.
Then her children surrender to wind to build their cocoons,
to one day fly in nameless memory.
The martian would camp under the trees, would seal his sleeping bag
over his head until he was left only with the sound of his own breath
& the beating of worm rain against his head.
The martian wonders if he is the moth, the mother, or the tree.
Sometimes we must hollow to survive.
They Whisper : Z.Z. Boone
& additional thanks to Z.Z. Boone for his MS: They Whisper
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BIO:
"Z.Z. Boone is the author of Off Somewhere, a 2015 finalist for the INDIFAB Award for Short Stories. His fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, The MacGuffin, and other terrific places. Z.Z., with wife/novelist Tricia Bauer, lives in Connecticut where he teaches at Western Connecticut State University." |
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