Chapbooks

Boys boys boys, in the grave and in each other’s faces, pummeling and beating and traversing the land like they once owned it and mean to take it back with bloody fists or at least pretend to, or at least leave it scarred up and sweaty for the meek to inherit.

excerpt:

“After beating those boys after punching their faces with bats until the idea of face became blurry after huffing clouds against the sky doubled over we debated whether to drag them out of sight or bury our boots between slats of rib taking turns until we were forced to stop from the coughing to catch our breath and leave. We would come back for them Ty told me we would clean up our mess but that rarely happened.”

17 pages
limited edition of 50
cover art by Jeanine Deibel
$5/purchase here

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Jennifer wants to get in on the ecstasy in the sky and ground, amongst the blue devils and pupas, The Cherryhillers and lotsa boys who want to fuck; Jennifer “just wants to sleep until she has been alive for longer, she is so young and she makes so many mistakes.” Sing-songy dirges for the living sung alternately in a scratchy tone akin to screeching or a lullaby coo. An excerpt:

Evil Things

In the Bermuda Triangle they are tall and knock down airplanes. Their feet go splash!splash! in the oceanblue. In townships, they skip through the streets like an anxious breeze, lifting Jennifer’s skirt on the balcony. Honk!Honk!

The Cherryhillers: Baby, show me your ass!
In devil movies there is no god : ( Teenagers self-mutilate and lights go on/off, on/off… The Blue Demon (dripdriping from the ceiling): BOO! 
Jennifer doesn’t blame him. One day he sees her snot-to-the-wall cry!ing.

The Blue Demon: AiiiEEEE!!!

Chugga.Chugga.

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40 pages
limited edition of 50
metallic-threaded covers
$5/order here

 

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Maia Elgin received her BA from Luther College and her MFA from Louisiana State University, studying under Lara Glenum and Lara Mullen. Her poems have been seen in Ghost Town, GlitterPony, and InDigest magazines. Her manuscript, Hullaballoo, was recently selected as a finalist for Switchback Book’s Gatewood Prize. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and her Pàdraig.

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Seth Oelbaum’s macey [triolets] is concerned with the comings-and-goings of teddy, sunny, mommy, and other such -ys as exist under the big bad sun, ie “touchy the stars! feely the moon”. A collection of triolets made for such touchings and feelings, funny in your mouth and smarty in your head.

In May 2012, Seth Oelbaum earned a poetry MFA from the University of Notre Dame. He’s CEO of the Tumblr literary corporation Bambi Muse. His publication credits include Radioactive Moat and Screaming Seahorse.

Watch a trailer for the chapbook made by Oelbaum:

An excerpt:

dragging our holey shop bags on sunny sidewalks,
teddy and i are crazy for cure that reams.
crackers, creams, combs — mommy steams up for price drops.
dragging our holey shop bags on sunny sidewalks,
we ask sunny, “sunny, why are you a cock?”
if you get, a comb you’ll get for unclean mien.
dragging our holey shop bags on sunny sidewalks,
teddy and i are crazy for cure that reams.

25 pages
limited edition of 50
$5/purchase here

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In TWINS Megan Milks enlists the Wakefield twins of Sweet Valley fame to participate in a choose-your-own-adventure, slippery and slidey and not quite like the books you read as an adolescent. Jessica or Elizabeth? How will the story end? Try each option on for size and see what happens; twinned blondes in blue eyes never seemed so spooky. Featuring guest appearances by the Baby Sitter’s Club, amongst others. Or as the author says: “An emphatically nonparodic exploration of compound female subjectivity and codependent dyadic relationships, constrained agency and unstable identity all via those all-american blonde bombshells with the sparkling blue-green eyes the Wakefield twins.”

Megan Milks is a writer living and teaching in Jacksonville, IL. Her fiction has been published in the volumes 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers; Wreckage of Reason: Experimental Prose by Women Writers; Fist of the Spider Woman; and Pocket Myths: The Odyssey; and can also be found in Artifice Magazine, The Wild, and PANK’s Queer Issue, among other journals. She co-edited Mildred Pierce Zine from 2005-2011 (RIP) and is currently co-editing one of seven issues of Birkensnake 6. This is her second chapbook.

excerpt:

So do it—duplicate me. Now. Move your leg when I move mine. Cross your legs when I cross mine. Stop. You’re not doing it right. You’re not—you never. Jessica. I’m warning you. Jessica. Jessica. Jessica. Jessica. Do I have to kill you. Jessica. Good. We are breaking down the wall between our bedrooms, Jessica. We are breaking down the wall between our bodies. Like O like H in your gut. Our gut. Ours. Are you all right. We can stand up straight. Because no matter what happens between us, I collapse. No matter what happens, you can’t escape me, can’t untangle. Because I felt you in my life before I ever collapse. Because we’ll always be connected in some strange and powerful collapse. Nothing can ever change that. Not for either of us.

45 pages
limited edition of 50
SOLD OUT

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Exteriors, interiors, film sets, sisters, cowboys, government, punching screens, voracious living death instincts, and everything of life or just propelled towards it with a ratty bow in its hair.

Carina Finn is a poet, playwright, and multimedia artist. She is the author of I HEART MARLON BRANDO,which was published in a limited screenprint edition in 2010 by Wheelchair Party Press. Her play, EVERYBODY, LET’S BELIEVE IN THIS IMAGINARY CURRENCY, premiered at The Bowery Poetry Club, and THIRTEEN WAYS OF BREAKING was workshopped and premiered thanks to the generosity of the Film, Television, & Theatre department at The University of Notre Dame. She a graduate of Sweet Briar College, has an MFA in poetry from Notre Dame, lives in New York City, and blogs at http://www.ladyblogblah.wordpress.com.

an excerpt:

EXTERIOR: THE OLD WEST OR THE GUTTED INTERIOR OF A PONTIAC BANSHEE

in cowboy movies everybody is noble and I like that about them also their skies. also in cowboy movies a lot of times the cowboys make breakfast in cast-iron appliances over real fires and without shirts on and the girls lie around feeling famished from so much cowboy-sex. if there were cowboys in winter they would still be able to make breakfast outside without shirts on because they are cowboys. the girls would wear dresses and bows and drink whiskey out of tin cups or break horses just like the cowboys except they are girls when they are in love which is always but especially or

I am riding in the back of a van with a bag of epees on my back and every fourth house has a star on it or cows or I tell myself a story about a modern general store that sells nothing but lemon drops in barrels or I am told a story about peanut butter and guns. outside the air smells like july or a pretzel factory or I am nailing a salt-lick to a rotting wooden wall.

a trailer:

Review by Kari Larsen

49 pages
limited edition of 50
sold out

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Fetish is a story about roommates, sex, violence, empathy, fear, desire, hustling, porn, compassion, kindness, disgust, and survival. It is also a story about a fetish. Jason Helm writes beautiful, finely-tuned prose sharpened with the rangy knife of reality, bitten to shards by the sweetnesses we manage to pull from within us in the most gnarled of times.

Listen to Helm read the entirety of Fetish, with sonic spookiness by Brother Bramm, here:

Excerpt:

When the UPS guy arrives, Bob scurries into his bedroom. Drone-like, his disembodied voice tells me to sign for the package, and I make a mental note: he’s scared shitless of being outed as a perv.

I open the door and UPS greets me with a stiff hello and no eye contact. Right away I see why: there’s a stamp on the cardboard box that reads, The Fantasy Warehouse, Making Your Dreams Cum True.

“It’s for my Dad,” I say, signing the electronic pad with the electronic pen.

“T. M. I.,” UPS says. “Too much information.”

“Is there any such thing?” I ask.

Bob is in his bedroom. When I enter, I see that he’s cleaned the syrup off; his leather crotch gleams in the incandescent lighting. I hand him the package, and there’s liberation in his green-ringed eyes.

“Oh, baby,” he says, tearing open the box. “Come to Daddy.” Without warning he lifts off his chain mail top and flings it to the floor. He shoehorns the leather chaps with thick fingers, and I’m suddenly looking at Bob in the buff.

“Like what you see?” he asks.

That’s when I decide to get a job.

$5

purchase here

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Carrie Murphy’s Meet the Lavenders (2011) introduces us to the fictional 1960s girl group The Lavenders, a threesome with dreamy dreams immersed in the pursuit of all that is girl group-related. A complex, adoring and intimate view of a musical and social phenomenon that usually doesn’t allow a scratch below the perfectly manicured surface.

Meet the Lavenders has a cover created by Rhani Remedes, with illustrations by Susanna Troxler and Remedes.

Watch a trailer forMeet the Lavenders:

chapbook trailer for Carrie Murphy’s ‘Meet the Lavenders’ from Birds of Lace on Vimeo.

Excerpt:

Identical Sequin Girls

Even our pee is perfumed. Watch us
synced up over microphones, leave
in baby-colored cars, hairspray in
the rearview.

I wear blue & she a darker blue & she a darker,
when we dance our arms arc the same.
Lipstick, bat lash
in time. Swivel,
sash.

I’m cat-eyed & unstarching,
pink, altoed, & smoothed
over. He loves me
more, drove me home, a
stiff-hair suspender boy
wrote our words & try
to dance.

I met him at the candy store!
I licked the rainbow
in a spiral but I’m still
nice &

only wear leather when we sing.

He tongued me up while I dreamed
#1.

SONG: Tonight’s The Night

Tonight is the night
When I’m feeling alright
Next to you
Not feelin’ blue

Compact mirror me,
I’m sixteen! I like cooking
& I’m kicky in stripes.

Wigs with bangs
after bobs go out because nobody
has seen Jackie in years. What’s
wrong with pinning a star
to your ear & calling it
glitter?

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$5
purchase here

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Ponyboy, Sigh: A Word Problem (2011) is a hybrid story-essay by Leon Baham wherein Ponyboy, of The Outsiders fame, is submerged in a queer (un)conciousness that swins through the murky waters of desire, fear, love, brotherhood, race, violence, mothers, tenderness and memory. A complication of faggotry with an inquisitive chorus and echo like a bloody cave.

Leon Baham is from the Inland Empire. He now lives in Seattle. He is currently working on his first long book titled The Book of Imaginary Boys.

An excerpt:

Anything happened when they met. They could have said not a word and pushed their lips together immediately, neither of them knowing really how to kiss another man. They could have seen each other around for three months glancing out of the corners of their eyes. Johnny could have seen Ponyboy in the shower and fled quickly with his half erection. Ponyboy could have followed him. Ponyboy could be Johnny’s father. Johnny could be any age younger than Ponyboy. Ponyboy is 17. Ponyboy could be a space invader and Johnny could be an earthling. Anything was how they met the point is that they were looking from eye to eye on the others face. Ponyboy with a shit eating grin. Johnny looking like a saint as he will be throughout the rest of this story. A plain bored face of ecstasy. Johnny was close to God and Ponyboy was faithless.

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21 pages
$5
Purchase here

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Kristina Marie Darling’s Footnotes to a History of the Victorian Novel (2011) is a poem in footnotes, wandering the ghosted halls of Victorian aesthetics in a spooky version of the whole story. This offering uses vintage wallpaper hand-sewn onto the pages with a tiny trinket and antique bobbin lace adorning the cover. All text is typed out on an IBM Selectric II typewriter. Footnotes can also be displayed as a poster on your wall, as it folds out accordian-style.

An excerpt:

5. In a little known version of the myth, Penelope realizes that her household has been usurped by the maids. Each disconcerted by her new posture. A chorus rising from their cool white throats.

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12″ x 19″ fold-out poster
out of print

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Perhaps a Girl Elsewhere (2011) contains poems that engage with feminist aesthetics and lyrical dazzlements equally, stapling themselves to your skin with ardent, playful ferocity. Exciting, smart poems with shards of love slid inside them.

Adam Strauss has two E-chapbooks: Nation-State (BlazeVox) & Address (Scantily Clad Press). He has poems forthcoming in Cricket Online Review and Parthenon West Review and has work up at Delirious Hem’s memorial for Leslie Scalapino. He loves the works of Gwendolyn Brooks. Visit him online here.

Excerpt:

Awe

The woman—perhaps
A girl elsewhere—

—“Too pretty for eyelashes”—
With 3 eggs

Stuns me. My
Feminism

Dictates I question
Awe—am in it.

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16 pages
forest green cover w/neon green innards
$5
purchase here

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C. Exigua (2011) is a collection of three short stories by Jackie Wang. Topics covered include runaway tongues, dirt/crumb revolutions, childhood memories, vomitous faces, disgusting shows of romance (see: vomitous faces), and all the varied complications and wondrous connections amongst such things.

Original illustrations for the cover & within by Caroline Bren
32 pages
$5
purchase here

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In the opening story of Rohin Guha’s Relief Work (2010) we are treated to
vomit, Steve Madden shoes, diarrhea, and the euphemism “eat-hole.”
Later there are blow jobs, teenagers, mothers, grandmothers, ghost
dogs leaving ghost shits, and a keen yearning for connection and
continuity; if you’re smart–and you are–then you know that all these
things are little glowing marks on the axis of life that can only be
puzzled out long after the fact. In Rohin’s world, we go home, live,
drink coffee, unfurl, fuck and fall asleep with the puzzle pieces
stuck to our cheek. We wake up and laugh at the reddened indentations
on our faces, and even though our small tragedies make us ache
something terrible, we call our mamas and tell them we love them.
Relief Work is a smart, funny, nasty little darling wretch of a
mama, and you will love her. Promise.

Relief Work is Pushcart Prize-nominee Rohin Guha’s first chapbook.
read an excerpt here
56 pages
cover artwork by Paul K. Tunis
$7
purchase here

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Fabulous Essential (2009) is the first chapbook of poems from Niina Pollari. Niina’s poems jump from the river and walk on land, live in the sky and eat you alive. Textures made of words to slick your body with a loving pulse: Fabulous Essential plays firmly in the land of the living.

Niina Pollari is a writer/translator lost in Brooklyn. She contributes to editorial duties in the staff of At-Large Magazine and curates the Bushwick Reading Series. She also oozes edifying verbiage at http://de-cidered.blogspot.com.

read reviews of Fabulous Essential:
The Chapbook Review

Galatea Resurrection

Excerpt:

Out Here Everything

Your blue slip weirds where the night bird waits
to pick your stockings
to raggedy. Girls,

remember. Even this
has a strong purpose, unwicked. Stash
your afraid and smile with your game face,

your hunting face. Emails will open themselves
without your limp long fingers
and the ghost minnow handshakes

they emit. You’re staircases up to houses
no-one visits. The creepers in the walkway

will know soon as you’re cold, but the legs
underneath you have a good running start, and you
have been under this weather before.

Niina reading from Fabulous Essential at The Birdwisher release party:

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Printed in stoplight colors w/hand-stamped covers
18 pages
out of print
download a free PDF here

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blood and jasmine when i dreamed her (2010) is a lyrical narrative tracing one woman’s life, family and psychic landscape. Beautiful and life-blooded to the fullest, the way your dreams are at their realest. blood and jasmine is Christine Vi-Van Nguyen’s first chapbook.

Christine reading from blood and jasmine when i dreamed her at The Birdwisher release party:

Christine Vi-Van Nguyen reads from ‘Blood and Jasmine When I Dreamed Her’ from birds of lace on Vimeo.

Excerpt:

Storytelling

I’m listening to a ghost story.

I’m nineteen and I’m not sure how much I believe in ghosts.
The night is warm, like those summers when I was five, ten, twelve,
and the moths cast beautiful shadows against the walls before settling down on the surface of the lamps to die.

I hear a soft sizzling noise.

My aunt says,
shhh, shhhhhhhhh

her eyes sparkle, and I can’t tell whether it’s a joke, part of the performance
or, in some strange way
the latent heat of the day dissipating, the lulling drugging pull of the jasmine
everything is serious.

My mother asks if everyone is ready
the crickets are crying their song to the moon
and I’m thinking of the taste of the hollow of Elias’ throat

My mother’s voice is difficult, deep and breakable, and I feel like I’ve waited too long.

I think of incense dying like gray angels gone against the spackle of my ceiling.

My grandfather, painting cranes.
The red feathers. The white.
Scratchy couches, and the smell of mungbean, of roast pork. Of fruit in front of black and white pictures in blue bowls, and fragile porcelain before dead faces.

Of the smell of jasmine in the evening, and a heat-wave summer.

It was a heat-wave summer.

Serving tea on a coarse off-white linen tablecloth.
The way the moon shone.
The way things tasted on my tongue, a warm remembering that is gently jasmine,

And telling ghost stories.
My mother’s eyes.

Her voice, saying

Every story is a ghost story. There are always ghosts.
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hand-stamped vintage wallpaper covers
out of print
download a free PDF here