The Bookends Review

Deep in the house
in the pit of the house
where the concrete sweats
there is a stain
and a leak so slow
it tastes of the dust
that it gleans in the rising—
It clings to us
a humid grit
that will stick
to the skin
a word lodged in
a throat
a secret shame.…

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when you came home that afternoon
they did not let me see you immediately.
i guess because you may have been covered
in ash, fear
fragments, blood that did not belong to you
but that is only a guess. the face you wore
was not unlike your usual but every corner
was turned down and all the lines in your skin
seemed more like canyons than cracks.
…

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RW Spryszak is Editor at Large at Thrice Fiction and Thrice Publishing. He’s been a creative writer for several decades, with a special interest in alternative/surrealist/outsider writing and zines. His first novel, Edju, was published last September and may or may not be “the first pulse of a trilogy.”

In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Founder and Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Spryszak about Edju, Thrice Fiction, the debate over paying/non-paying journals, the world of surrealist writing, music (of course), and much more!

– RW Spryszak

…

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Let go of the willing captives. The reborn followers.
Even the cruelest deserve to know you don’t exist.
Bring forth the freedom made by your absence.
Make a promise and keep it. Take this cup of truth
and drink from it. Swish this salt of surrender inside
your mouth. Multiply skeptics far and wide. Flood
newfound wisdom across these deserts
of prayer. Oh, Lord, like a good hero, ride your horse
into that sunset and never turn back.

– Aidan Chafe

Author’s Note: “Prayer in the Age of Unreason” came about because of my current obsession with Judeo-Christian mythology. I was reading poetry from Jericho Brown and Katie Ford, as well as non-fiction and essays from Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. The combination became a tonic for me writing about religion.…

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Because her brother, Ian, is prone and crying, Millie feels cross; she’s already ten and super interested in castles. Mummy enters the living room, pivots over a yellow building block, like a chicken, and hoists him up by the armpits:

“Come on, you’re a big boy. There’ll be a maze and an adventure playground! You can watch television any day of the week–but can you see a castle?”

She carries him under one arm–a big bellied troll with a captured kid–and restrains him in the child-seat where he whimpers until the engine’s vibrations seem to hypnotize him.

The car flows into traffic, turns glacial and solidifies and the children both grow stolid in harmony. After the road has come to a standstill Millie watches Ian blink and nod.…

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– Alex Lee…

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I walked to the foot of a clock tower.  It was the end
of a ghost town, light filtering through dull windows,
birds turning their heads from their makeshift roosts.

A woman in a trench coat hurried to the top of the stairs,
hush, hush, her footsteps, the rain outside, a winter storm.
The blue made the birds seem breakable, the clock still—

everything else was darkness, not a click but a shudder,
which served as an explanation that even the perceptible
needs to be reminded of itself.  The woman might have said

come with me, but I couldn’t tell.  Not that I would have known
what to say. Sometimes my eyes are more
clever than a kaleidoscope, like a voice at the top of a stairwell

which says don’t you remember what could’ve been?…

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