Bone & Ink Press

Bone & Ink Press is an indie publishing house & a mostly-monthly online journal. // boneandinkpress.com

[boneandinkpress]

No one knows the distances we traveled, how you exhaled smoke towards the rising sun and told me     a crow crossed  your path and translated our future, spoke to you of nesting dolls, balalaikas, white     amber that would boil over then simmer until our own sorceress would appear with porcelain cups     and milk.

Beth Gordon, from Aubade with Russian Tearoom

[boneandinkpress]

Do you remember the heat-stroked evenings we laid spent like wrinkled bills exchanging hands for the last pint of beer? How it rained every night but we held one another by each other’s dream through it?

Samuel J Fox, from Hurricane (I)

[boneandinkpress]

You said you missed fireflies how you used to catch them in cupped hands as a kid they flickered in and out lit up your palm lines I said, maybe they were reading your fortune

Chloe N. Clark, from Lampyridae

[boneandinkpress]

It’s a looped memory. Things fall apart, second string boys swim between us. I wanted to be like Ava and Lana, who shared more than cigarettes and lipstick.

Marisa Silva-Dunbar, from I’ve seen ghost towns in their eyes

[boneandinkpress]

All Hallows Eve’s upon us all once more:

The time has come to hang the lantern’s head

And hollow out the pumpkin to the core,

Lighting candles, scaring off the dead.

—Robert Grant, from Samhain

[boneandinkpress]

Her Daddy would have been among the guisers once, when he was a young man. Lizzy backed away, fearful of their rowdiness. If her Daddy were there, he'd have taken her little hand in his big calloused hand and he'd have told her that no one there would hurt her, that it was all just a game. Just boys having a bit of fun.

-Jess Doyle, from A Little Something for the Dead

[boneandinkpress]

the night’s silver breath stings

the back of your neck so

your shiver echoes through the dark

canyons of the trees

where something hides

—Suzy Howe, from [Where the backyard light only dresses...]

[boneandinkpress]

I grew up in a haunted house. It’s not so bad, it’s not like what they depict in the movies, all possession and nightmares and slamming doors (although that did happen once). It’s more like there’s something in your house that’s trapped there, confused and lost, trying to communicate to someone, anyone, so that they can gain a tether in the darkness. Something familiar that they can latch onto, some sign of life in the ether.

-Cain, from The Spirits Who Watch Us

[boneandinkpress]

i’m / looking at you, / shadows painting / skull-sockets like war paint / and eyes that want / to swallow the world / as how the void / wants to swallow you.

—Quinn Lui, from how the world ends

[boneandinkpress]

In the end, however, my “bride” left me for Dracula, that asshole. She said it was because he was always so impeccably dressed. He even wears a cape. A cape! I told her, do you really think there’s room for two in that dumb coffin of his? She said she doesn’t care. That she’ll happily sleep on the floor, or even a bed if she has to. She said she likes his sense of style. Apparently, I have no sense of style.

—Eric Andrew Newman, from The Frankenstein’s Monster Monologues

[boneandinkpress]

fun fact / you can love dead things / in any way you want / tenderly / hard / terribly

—Vanessa Maki, from Dead Things

[boneandinkpress]

He received a postcard from his sister in the mail that afternoon. The glossy front depicted the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, suckling from the teats of the she-wolf. He pondered a theory remembered from a college elective on Ancient History. Linguistic evidence linked the she-wolf to an ancient sex worker who took pity on the twins. Tenderness and compassion threaded delicately into the violent tapestry of Roman foundation myths.

—Ray Ball, from The Postcard and the Prescription

[boneandinkpress]

For when the winds come, when they come

they will blow loose your mourning veil

they will lead you down a less-trod trail

And when the dead women, waiting for you

encircle you with their thin arms

you will be made stronger for their charms

—Solana Rose, from When The Winds Come

[boneandinkpress]

He opened some beers, and we sat at the kitchen table, drinking and talking. He told me how cheap everything was in Vermont, and we reminisced about our apartment on Highland Ave. It was good to see him again. He had grown a beard, and there were streaks of gray in it. But other than that, he was the same as he’d always been.

—Ryan Napier, from Matthew

[boneandinkpress]

October thunders the roof,

whistles past window panes,

frames the cold, aches my insides.

some parts of me

are older than others.

you want to cover me.

you want to seal the windows

and smoke in the dark

so that we become pin-points of burning ash

between inhales.

—Leda Muscatello, from This Season

[boneandinkpress]

The once bare mound sprouted grass, a reminder that time didn't stop to mourn any death. The white lilies left on the day of the funeral had long ago browned and shriveled and turned to dust. I didn't replace the flowers, instead leaving bouquets of memories.

—Lisa Lerma Weber, from Beloved

[boneandinkpress]

Dead leaf, devil's flower, I don't believe

in these judgmental gods that escalate

the hate in a different direction.

—Juliet Cook, from Invasive Dead Leaf