Category: Bad Survivalist

Bad Survivalist: “DON’T CHIDE THE HOOTCH” & other RIP VW erasure/collages by Nance Van Winckel

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Nance Van Winckel’s ninth poetry collection, The Many Beds of Martha Washington, is just out with the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series/Lynx House Press. She’s also published a book of visual poems with Pleiades Press (2016) and five books of fiction, most recently Ever Yrs, a novel in the form…
Bad Survivalist Poetry: “where the space ends” by Anthony Santulli

even maps know that point of view is a lifeless music—that the next sense to evolve will only create further desire to escape from experience at intermission, the utterance of terms we barely notice (these things happen in the cracks, their particular hiss) …
Bad Survivalist: Three Poems by Emily Pinkerton

Go Like This Write in front of mirrors. Talk to yourselfin the bathroom. Spend late nights alone.Wake early, follow the sun. Tread carefully.Forgive with a watchful eye and an ear to the ground. Emergency Control in case I emergency. I handleas indicated. I open. Door turnsand I emergency. I plan. Responseincoming. In case I need.…
“This Sultry Thing Called Home,” a Bad Survivalist Poem by Dhwanee Goyal

Loosely after Katia Krafft, a French volcanologist. Also somewhat inspired by John Ashbery. There were no landscapes where I lived, only water, its animals. Still, my father used to come home with fire burning the ends of his moustache. You know the story of birth: how woman meets woman, shrieks for every tragedy that could…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Bear, Flower, Ferryman,” by Margaret Redmond Whitehead

For a long time that morning, the bear occupied herself with a cardboard box. Its walls were plushy and wet—soaked from the night’s rain—but rigid enough that it held its shape. It was on its side, with both ends open, creating a tunnel that was just barely too small for a bear to pass through.…
Steve Gergely: “VanLife,” a flash fiction for Bad Survivalist

For the past two weeks I’ve been living out of my van. It’s not a lifestyle for everyone, but at this juncture of my life, it was the best move for me. I mean, I’m twenty-two, soon to be twenty-three, so I can’t be living with my parents anymore. With one kid in preschool and…
Robert Scotellaro: “A Sky Full of Crickets,” flash fiction triptych for Bad Survivalist

Hatching They are strapped in their upside-down car for hours before the firemen, slicing through metal, free them. The deer comes out of nowhere and when Clyde swerves the car flips. The airbags release, with a moments harsh embrace, then deflate. When Arleen says: “Fuck!” in a tone familiar to him he is finally able to…
“Electrolysis,” a Bad Survivalist Short Short by Roger D’Agostin

The follicles didn’t know why they were slathered in foam, but 17 said, “Don’t complain, this is the longest we’ve been.” Follicle 1 goose bumped, then quickly regained her composure. “Let’s not discuss the past.” The others knew that Follicle 1, being the first, had suffered the most. Plucks. Wax. Bleaching. But this foam, it felt good. Still, Follicle 1 hoped…
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…