Category: Bad Survivalist

New Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “The Woodcutter” by Mike Itaya

In the medieval woods of 1307, a gentle woodcutter and a spinsterly-type lived in a pristine cottage and shared a lonely life together, so lonely that in a moment of fraught miscalculation, the couple agreed to board Trina, a terrible person from Pascagoula, Mississippi. Trina had a chainsaw tattooed above her bottom, and used “blow…
New Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Karen” by Eleanor Levine

She speaks thirty seconds, a mere thirty seconds, after I ignore her for five years, and then I’m back. I’m always back. * I am like the trappers in Werner Herzog’s movie Happy People—the trackers of the Siberian Taiga—happy in their solitary hunting, but I’m not solitary. * Karen was my girlfriend for six months,…
Bad Survivalist: “Up next,” a visual story hybrid by N.D. Brown

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. _____________________________________ 1. The following are real YouTube videos generated from the search, “Protect My Family.” 2. Times Watched: 3 3. Times Watched: 6 4. Times Watched: 2 5. Times Watched: 4 6. Times Watched: 8 7. Times Watched: 1 8. Times Watched: 1/2 9. Times Watched: 3/4…
“When It Was Over,” a Bad Survivalist poem by Tyler Dillow

It was like coffee spilling on my shoes. The insects: beetles, ants, mosquitos. You—repeating—and flies on my feet, in my ears, on my feet. It was the buzzing that filled me. Mayflies, the color of your skin. Caterpillars, the color of your skin. Their eyes, the color of your skin. My name—you kept saying it—over…
Five Antarctica Poems by Dennis James Sweeney

70°5’S 65°40′E In the Antarctic Circle, our main concern is self-husbandry. Cutting dark chops from the dark sky. Identifying lifelong manacles. Feeling for the key. Suspending paper katydids from the ceiling at just the right angle: the difference between Hank’s breath and the hot, light breeze of the radiator. They trigger different flights. At times…
Two New Pieces by Vi Khi Nao

MY SKIN Because I dream of you as skin and door …I know you have been sublime beforeAs engorgedAs distorted as my view of the world If I could surrender your nameYour lipsYour invasionTowards more heroic hoursI would be asking you to slingYour kiss forward as if toKill what isn’t saliva, which isn’t the fiberglass…
Flash Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Slow Burn” by Kristina Ten

The explorer wakes up on a strange planet with no memory of how she got there, clawing at the black ground beneath her, gulping against the smoke-filled air. It wouldn’t be the first time, this getting to and forgetting. She scans her surroundings: no ship, wrecked or otherwise; no rations or equipment to help with…
Poetry for Bad Survivalist: “The Bars, the Anthem” by Imran Boe Khan

Down here, spider blue’s sour candy singsong plays out like confession. On my walk home, civilians cleanse into pulpits, brining compassion as they watch me hammer euphoria into gallows. Some reach for cash, others call the cops and when the sirens come, they rise like it’s the national anthem, I’m on one knee till the…
New Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Warehouse” by Chase Burke

Amazon’s warehouses are warehouses of commerce. Every item an American might desire, shelved and organized from floor to ceiling over acres of glazed concrete. Likewise Walmart—containing multitudes, now minus the hyphen. Likewise every mall of America. Ditto the dumpster. If trash is a record of consumption then it is also a record of purchasing power.…