Category: Bad Survivalist

Original Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Sugar” by Gogol

You don’t like cutting anymore. You don’t like stitching too. You are broke, mostly a failure, and the only place where they will allow you to cut and stitch is in the hospital located at the outskirts of the sugarcane field. You stay in a room at the periphery of the hospital. The women yell,…
New Poetry for Bad Survivalist: “when i say i still think of you in august” by Cate Latimer

i mean that when i saw that truck full of chickens on highway 5, feathers grazing yellow lines, i wished on their mangled bodies and white wings pinned like fallen gods to the road. you taught me to do that. you, who left streaks of lipstick on my dashboard and playing cards in my center…
Paul Ilechko: Three Poems for Bad Survivalist

Truck Stop The sky was a grid of varying colorsnone of which were visible to the naked eyebut the man vaping in the cab of an F-150knew instinctively that he was parkedbelow a quadrant of the darkest magentathe handle clicked as a door swung openand a body hauled itselfinto the passenger seattattoos glowing fluorescent under…
Poetry for Bad Survivalist: “What a World” by Joshua Stanek

The wind did devotions through the gorge when you arrived.The sun brighter and wet seasons more bountiful. Mountain lions track deer over the swift flow of interstateson bridges made for the deer, the lion, the blackberry bush, and the bobcat with a wild hare in its jaw. You were bornupon a communication boom, you see.…
Nonfiction for Bad Survivalist: “Unruly Roots” by Morgan Rose-Marie

I’ve tried to make this call four or five times this week. Now that my mother is finally on the other end, I find myself wishing I were once again hearing her voicemail greeting instead. Growing up, when I answered the house phone, the caller would inevitably launch into conversation. “I’m Morgan,” I would interrupt.…
Bad Survivalist Hybrid by Elissa Fertig: “Thank You for Contacting The Void. Your Scream Is Very Important to Us.”

Private jets emit fourteen times more pollution than commercial airline flights. With all of the flash floods that have been happening in Las Vegas, we are going to erode the topsoil until all that’s left is bedrock. Last night we went to Dorian’s and I had three glasses of white wine and your girlfriend barely…
Bad Survivalist Poetry: “All Four Toothbrushes Have Teeth” by Jo Morrigan Black

All four toothbrushes have teeth, soI mustn’t touch them the toothbrush her ex left behind five months ago hasteeth the shaggy bristled toothbrush with the suction cup has teeth the toothbrush that she held in her mouth yesterday while she texted that she’d like me to come over hasteeth the toothbrush still under plastic has…
Two Bad Survivalist Pantoums by Dan Collins

~ in which A.I. subroutines struggle with consciousness by investigating human thought through pantoums. A perfect OX Still, I refuse to accept that a perfect ox is the golden meanforged of utility and symmetry, but a stubborn pony cannot providea comfortable ride to the sublime. No matter how it goes, you musttrust what remains of…
Bad Survivalist: Five Poems by Barbara Tomash

Of Ancestors their bodies they knew primarily as instruments of noncompliance almost immortal lost among causes their hearts blacked-out hollows their lungs they pricked trillions of times they could ill afford breath the wrench of speech is that how one dies by sound by echo I repeat you endlessly in a mazy motion above ground…