Category: Bad Survivalist

Bad Survivalist: Three Little Things by Leigh Chadwick

Skinny Kids Skinny kids touching light with their tongues pressed against the sun. Skinny kids with half their teeth gone. Skinny kids with an assembly line of ribs and souls and hearts and sometimes lungs, and mostly always earlobes. Skinny kids watching a dodo run a lemming off a cliff. Skinny kids with half their…
“Dyin’ Lion”: A Bad Survivalist Work Fiction by Jonathan Bluebird Montgomery

I know everyone thinks I’m just a cabdriver, but I also work at the zoo. They pay me to take care of the lion, a 550 lb predator-cat from sub-Saharan Africa trapped inside an artificial habitat. The lion is magnificent and a success of evolution. It is a beautiful, golden killing machine, and when his…
MM/DD/2020: Three Residuals from RESIDUE

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. These pieces are from the book Residue (forthcoming 05/01/2021), a text/image collaboration of dream-inspired fictions by DD that were prompted by Rorschach-like prints by MM (collectively known as MM/DD/2020), both subconsciously rendered in response to the anxiety-ridden events of 2020. More information about the project can be…
“Criminal”: A Bad Survivalist Short Story by Meg Tuite

My mouth belonged to me. “Your head is flat as a tape worm.” We waited in line to get measured. Anything over six inches was condemned as perverse and a student was sent home. These girls lived for high hair. She said, “Fuck your mother.” “My mother’s dead.” She gestured the sign of the cross…
“while we wait for a vaccine,” a Bad Survivalist poem by Michele Popadich

i flock to the lawless. bleachmy hair purple & lob uneven bangs.finally, a stranger to wave to in the foggy medicinecabinet. the sink sprouts split ends & i ask a boyup. pinky my finger into his elasticband. he replaces the cat that has been tuckedbetween my legs for seven months. i write storiesthat mean nothing…
Erin Lyndal Martin: “Mahat-Pad Meditation,” an exercise for Bad Survivalist

Today we are going to do the Mahat-Pad visualization from ancient times. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down where you can be undisturbed. As you settle in, turn your attention to your body. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Notice where you are holding onto tension in your body, and let the…
John B. Oldenborg: Three Poems for Bad Survivalist

Eco-TerroristAfter the Great Miami-Dade Snail Invasion of 1966 I.When there are no more breadcrumbsflocks of the elderly and seagulls dissipatescents from their cottage chimneys (yes the seagullstoo have chimneys) Scentsof windowsill piesand chamomileThere are many contractsThis is one of themSince grandma gets depressedwhen the seagulls don’t visitAnd the seagulls attackmy grandma She forgets who she…
Joe Rupprecht: “dear nebula,” a poem for Bad Survivalist

1. swarms milk the sky’s geometry our imaginary cocoonsembrace dead pupassocketed with smallpearlescent eyes the dark spits a gnatfrom my whole floating panorama asmoths flapinterludes ofloving you the way they hurt meis on my mind all the time I was in their hands for playing witha show of forceenough to wantto leave myself and say…
“Lessons Unlearned”: A Bad Survivalist Poem by Colby McAdams

It’s true, in order to stay relevantI try to learn one new skill every yearNaturally, I must forget one too. My memory, lacking resonance, picked-over and ebbing. I was a reader one spring, and a writer the next,Then suddenly I (blissfully) wasn’t either. I’m telling you, for years, ducking in and out of traffic,struggling towardsa…