Excerpt from Coil by Lou Pam Dick
If to start one step ahead, wrong step, the nix is a beginning. I wore my stairs around my neck, therefore I choke. Please be legible. What time is it? The door keeps opening. My protector gets all wet. I shout, I am my bodyguard! I whisper it inside me. Bare the neck of the... Read More
Five Poems by Ted Dodson
I would look away / Into the room’s silent reception / But as my character recedes I tire of looking at all. / The world has ended. Your resurrection eyes / Come across this second to last line—you / Can be assured I have read this already...
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Five Poems by Lindsay Remee Ahl
what seemed solid, the brick building we lived in, / the street corner I waited on to hold my child’s hand— / vanished in a breath / night all around, rain falling, I hear a crack— / a tree plummets to the road right before me / but I’m still standing as though / all... Read More
Vestiges_03: Mimesis Cover & Contributors Preview
Vestiges_03: Mimesis will feature work from Susan Daitch, Andrei Codrescu, Victor Segalen, Vi Khi Nao, Steven Seidenberg, Daniel Poppick, Lindsay Remee Ahl, Ted Dodson, Iris Marble Cushing, Greg Mulcahy, Gabriel Blackwell, Tony Mancus, Laurie Stone, Daniel Owen, Kyra Simone +more... Read More
A Frenzy to the End by Erin Fleming
I walked down the street as it spiraled, ever tighter, ever darker, never reaching its center, until I was in complete black and traced my hand on the wall that lined my path. I felt that I was walking into the center of an enormous shell. Experience—biting; earth—taught me that something waited at the center... Read More
One Poem by Engram Wilkinson
Procedures exhausted / before hands emulsify / that last grief into effective / managerial utterances. / Constant monitoring, / lines of electrodes / extending into each / lengthening present / itching every universe / with the newest ideation... Read More
Two Poems by Vi Khi Nao
The eloquent lungs of us twins are piled / upon one another. Mother, your / concealed nipples are the tents that the / feet of our existence step on. / I hope our breathing doesn’t temporarily / upset your evening inside the tumescent / hide. This oblivion. This sublime maternal / gesture. Coming from you... Read More
Open Call for Submissions: Vestiges_03: Mimesis
Black Sun Lit is now accepting submissions for the third volume of Vestiges: Mimesis. For Aristotle, art was the faithful imitation of nature, in which beauty could be realized. For Wilde, life was an imitation of art, which operated like a veil and no longer a mirror. Though diametrically opposed in appearance, both claims have... Read More
Excerpts from My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, trans. from French by Rainer J. Hanshe
Love can be derived from a generous feeling: the taste for prostitution; but it is soon corrupted by the taste for property. Love wants to abandon itself, to confound itself with its victim, as the conqueror with the vanquished, & yet preserve the privileges of the conqueror...
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The Cave Solution by Janalyn Guo
I was told I would fight back at the greenhouse; I would struggle with letting go. At night, I can’t sleep, and even the mantras don’t help. My body burns, the same way it feels when I forget something important and it’s too late to go back. I am full of regrets... Read More