camera obscura by Scherezade Siobhan
the first time i see my father / it is at the nosebleed dusk of his funeral / i travel 7,000 miles for a photograph / — his body’s a half-lit cathedral of bones / here chopin is a rosebud clutched between / the gondolier’s lips; an étude’s silk... Read More
Three Poems by Marcus Berian Nicholls
Flowers of mercury / fall from our mouths. / Thoughts crepitate / on bleached stone / and briars curl / in the thickets / bones lie / in the dust of lunar oceans. / Moss undulates / but in your liver / a china pebble stirs... Read More
Two Poems by K. Thomas Kahn
would that there were endless ink the skyscraper / flame reflected in the Hudson as the poem appears there / I keep you to one side the river on the other / words just copy to you padding your billfolds so that / on holiday you miss a sunset meet a deadline... Read More
An Archaeology of Holes by Stacy Hardy
A hole has so many enemies. I watch the weather closely, every pattern, every warning. Rain forms and drops. The soil is sodden and slippery. At night the wind blows. I fear avalanches... Read More
Two Poems by Colin Dodds
The center may seem near / Waking to the sun a cudgel bludgeoning / front-desk clerks and taxi drivers crumbling all / to tenuousness even stone can’t remedy / Impossible heat making concrete sweat and crack / driving the most progressive town elders / back under thatched roofs... Read More
The Event Still to Come by David Peak
Transposition: A series of cavernous, empty spaces at the end of a winding road. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Walls covered with portraiture: families, children, hands and feet. Wood paneling. Molded ceilings. Various arrangements of tarnished silver. Significant water damage. Black mold. A staircase that leads nowhere... Read More
Don’t Let This Happen to You by Harry Leeds
The funeral is over and they’ve almost finished stuffing their craws with water, smoked fish, that good, black bread so cheap but these days rare. Jowls filled with water, bubbling to show off the prowess developed over decades, into middle age, of making unpleasant shapes and noises with their faces... Read More
Dalalæða by Iris Moulton
I have a houseplant. His name is Thor. I wanted to spell it the Icelandic way—Þór—with that impossible little thorn, that jaunty laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative, but my boyfriend said it was too pretentious. He said medievalists have no business naming things, that we should make nothing new... Read More
Open Call for Submissions: Vestiges_02: Ennui
Black Sun Lit is now accepting submissions for the second volume of Vestiges: Ennui. Boredom was the tree of life that protected Adam against the ravages of old age; the ambrosia that cleansed the delightful body of Era. When Des Esseintes abandons the pleasures of bourgeois Paris, he does so in pursuit of a richer... Read More
Mundane Cruelty by Paul Kavanagh
The secret is rhizomatic. The secret is a patch of mushrooms awakening in a quagmire. The secret is a corolla which is opening up to the sun and whose dust is filling the air causing: 1. A runny nose. 2. Swelling under the eyes and tears. 3. A puce taint to the face... Read More