sermon on ruination
how do bones fly? / wings, feathered graves / thin and hollow.
Featured
Featured
sermon on ruination
André O. Hoilette
how do bones fly? / wings, feathered graves / thin and hollow.
Power
For the next eight weeks, BP Review will publish a new poem that engages with the idea of power. These poems will collectively highlight the range and journey required to connect to the source, both within ourselves and between one another...
Three Poems / Tres Poemas
I don’t know how / you’ll feel connected / when the screens and wires go dumb. || No sé cómo te sentirás conectado / cuando las pantallas y cables se entorpezcan...
The Opener
I say thank you because this is the Midwest and I’m not a psychopath...
Hayden and the Forgotten Siren
In the small Florida county where I teach evening classes, they test the tornado siren nightly...
False Father
There was a time, not long ago in the grand scheme, when John would have known how to handle this conspiracy theorist...
Unprecedented Longing: Five Poems
Translated from the German by Carlie Hoffman.
We Are All But Fumbling Creatures
We drowned trying to save our chickens from the flood of 1904...
My Home Is (⠍⠽⠀⠓⠕⠍⠑⠀⠊⠎)
a psalm sung from a palm tree east of the Mississippi River / southern gothic literature swatting away mosquitoes...
Propagation
I once read an article about a woman who included her fifty-year-old Philodendron in her will...
The New Floridian Exclusion Zone
Herrum, king-nominate of the longland peninsula trots through blistering sand dunes scattered with sea oats towards the great saltwater...
The Driver
I should also mention he was holding a gun. A friendly gun. A gun that belonged in a gun show or an old Spaghetti Western. In fact, everyone in the room had a gun.
January 7, 1972
Under othersong & chlorpromazine
(—My pops’ more presentational than your pops)
he hatched inside the inside of your drinking.
Three Poems
No one alive was around 550 years ago.
So who cares what the experts say...
The Greencard’s Kid
My sister and I talked funny, hard t’s and wrong vowel
sounds for American English...
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Essay
Rancher
Selah Saterstrom
Mixed Media
A Field Guide
to Embodied Archiving
to Embodied Archiving
Leah Sandler
Poetry
Little God
Avni Vyas
These limited edition books are currently only available as part of a 2021 Burrow Press subscription. Subscribers directly support our publishing program, allowing us to take more artistic risks and provide a home for work that might otherwise be overlooked.
A Synthesis of Homeground
The mangrove tree is not the Florida State Tree. If I believed in statehood, I would put in a petition...
The Bed
After, when mom and I went home, everything felt too small. You don’t really know what to do with your body afterwards...
Four Poems
that smoke; detail of shears; detail of matches; i go to a hole in the wall carribean restaurant because their beans taste like my father’s beans...
happy valley & rita’s first day of spring
In China, “bitten peach” is code for queerness...
Wellness Check
I moved to Florida and began living like the elderly I’d long admired...
Brevard County Zoo Keeps Vultures
they gather like they’ve always done, waiting
for other animals to do the hard work of dying...
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Encourages Homeowners to Kill, Whenever Possible, Any Green Iguana Found on their Property, July 2019
“We are in peak iguana season,” a trapper says
with a shrug on the evening news as a way
to describe, though not really explain,
how a retiree’s pool attendant in Boca Raton
came to be shot in the calf by a pellet gun...
Reprints
The Armadillo
The old man
told us to spend more time in graveyards and I will
not I will spend more time with the armadillo
because he shows me there is such a thing as un-sad
Gods in the Surf
I envy my American city friends
their impractical swimsuits made
to be seen not touched by sea
Modern Nature
The bee pooped on a rug. He turned around to inspect it. He had thoughts about death. He always did when faced with his own waste.
Once, I Was New To America’s West
When you leave this life, this fast and bright
existence in the Mojave, for the swamplands
of home, you can’t help but wonder if the Florida
alligators will eat you alive.
Spaniel
William puts Ernie’s dead body into the hole with the help of his seven-year-old daughter...
Say Hello to the Doula
On a hot Thursday morning, deep in month eight of the red tide outbreak, Cicely and Zinnia walked together to Zinnia’s hideout to retrieve a cold bag of placentas.
Who Said?
How does he know I am not a boy anyway? Who said? What is a boy? I’d ask someone but I don’t care.
Wish You Were Here
I feel like I want to apologize for the quality of these postcards. I wish they had been better ones, and that I could have sent you images of sunsets and palm trees and dazzling flamingos.
Mouse
Disney stuck an explosive
in the mascot’s mouth,
lit it up, then pop,
smiled at his blackface in the mirror
Mermaid Camp
I’m an eel
until I inhale water—then I am messy,
lightheaded—like after too much laughing
or kissing.
Nakba
This language tastes like songs
of my sedo and before, days when land was soft beneath bare feet,
before bombshells bore into ground, before bullet skins showered
seeds in the dust.
Three Cells
The Queen fulfills her body with indifferent duty.
She follows her most chemical senses
and senses what Keeper takes is taken willingly.
Some Suggestions for the Future
Meet me in our new forest
of indirectly plentiful resources.
Gun Shaped State Off Safety
who would’ve thought Florida would be so sci-fi
I.N.S. kicking in doors in six cities in Dade
home invading a hard working un invasive species of humans
sending them back to their planets
Le Spleen de la Floride
Austerity is the disappearance of spaces physical and psychic. The emptied out geographies of longing...
Three Miami Poems / Tres Poemas de Miami
Famed art deco replaced by fire coral
and colorful parrot fish, neon lights
restored by pulsating swarms of moon
jellyfish, lit up like a Saturday night.
Indie Night at the Goth Club
How many times can we put on a costume until it is no longer a costume?
Eustace Eliger Edgecombe Remembers
I even forgot the caramel of my lover’s skin, forgot the way back
to my island, forgot myself and pledged my life in service to one
man’s pleasure, donned the white gloves and clutched a clipboard
Wild Thing
We married for necessity, not love, and when we tired of our husbands, we dispatched them quietly in the night.
The Fruits of Riverview Boulevard
At first, you place the fruit very methodically around the house. A mango in the microwave. Limes replacing lightbulbs. A grapefruit in the coffee pot.
Aubade for Fernandina Beach
Just let me crawl back inside the nautilus and
hide from sky, from more funerals.
There against its pearled lip
my own wounds are barely visible.
Alas, Babylon
The rumor is
there’s a bomb shelter
beneath our little town.
Going Home: Gone Home, Found Family, and Pulse
They had changed enormously in the time I’d been gone. They’d endured an enormous loss without me. They had mourned without me. They had come together to heal - memorials, tributes, fundraisers, vigils, community service drives - all without me.
The Bees
It was the first week into her second trimester, and here she was, smoking a cigarette and filling her stomach with bees.
How the Devil Finds Out
It happened on the corner of 147thand Miller, beneath the long branches of an oak hanging over the corner. It happened often enough— usually to white kids crossing U.S.1 in front of the University of Miami or other tourists on The Beach—but seldom in this residential area, and never on this intersection.
Amber Stream
He fished the Suwannee: slow-
flowing, tea-stained, wild, where the river
drops through limestone and revives itself.
Ha Ha! Very Funny
In which two unrepentant teenagers run amok in Fort Myers, FL.
Mi Papa, Mi Cuerpo
As the burning sensation in my stomach became an addiction, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. I felt empowered by my starvation.
To Advocate and Entertain: An Interview with Nicole Saunders
Be an honest writer. Honest writing is heart-wrenching.
What Blood
Mr. Chuck Stonehill walked over from next door and told me he found a tackle-box, a bullet, and a rubber by the picnic table in the backyard under the palm tree between our rusting beach trailers.
Schnozzle
I was so innocent that my first thought was he didn’t know he was exposed. But the way he was staring at me so fixedly soon made me realize it was on purpose.
For Urgent Prayer, Please Press 1
I have no more strength except in this pointer
finger, to leave my print on the keypad and unlock the rest
of this message.
An Excerpt from Radio Dark
The streets of Memphis’ town had been orange groves when he was a boy. He remembered as, one by one, the groves were bulldozed to make room for neighborhoods, for the people from up north, finally tired of the long winters, to settle into their respiratory diseases and neurological disorders.
Lonely Boy Fights
The ending to my story in Orlando flickers. I thought I knew how the story would end when I first set out to write this series. The scene would be framed at the Orlando International Airport...
Lonely Boy Dates
If I like her and she likes me, we run the gauntlet: Wally’s, Lil Indies, Tako Cheena, and then a fifty percent chance of never seeing each other again...
Lonely Boy Dances
At Lil Indies, a hipster bar, it doesn’t seem like many people are getting into the music. People pause conversation and look at the empty dance floor like someone left on the TV. So I decide to get wasted out of my mind until I believe in myself...
Lonely Boy Grocery Shops
I’m too lazy to walk the 1.5 miles to Publix, so I hail a Lyft and sit on the apartment complex stairs with my chin in my palm, thinking about a Buddhist koan...
Lonely Boy Walks
Walking Alafaya Trail, I understand that death has taken the same path...
Lonely Boys Don’t Have Cars in Orlando
In Orlando, friends have streamed in and out of my life. Musicians, writers, sculptors, martial artists, undergrads, everyday people with big dreams of traveling the world. People who give me rides.
Reservations
It’s peak season and all the snowbirds are here, trying to escape the horror of the outside, for the last few weeks the smell of decayed ocean life has fallen like a curtain of death.
Jesus Christ Super Scar
Joanna slowly collapsed. I caught her and lowered her to the floor, stood back up and watched her writhe, sob, and frantically babble words I didn’t understand.
Florida Man Steals Weapon, Bites Security Guard, Flees in Gold Convertible
People bury things
all the time, like this, waiting for them to turn slick.
When the Water Witches Come Dancing for Their Supper
The Rusalki wait outside my window every night. White lips, grotesque smiles, green hair streaming with silver fish and lily pads. It’s like being in an aquarium. The Rusalki point and jeer through the glass. They tap on the frosted panes with icicle fingernails.
Sean Shakespeare: Music is the Swiss Army Knife of the Human Condition
His musical style echoes the old school hip-hop sound, and it carries with it an aire of hopeful and good-natured authenticity which reflects his inspiration.
East of Apalachicola Haunted
They’ve trained up their boys with switches & belts. On storm-nights, a boy might fall asleep counting barrels of oysters to shuck.
“Florida Man flashes buttocks at IHOP after impersonating a police officer to get free food,” & other thoughts on Florida as home
13 outtakes from Sarah Viren's Oxford American essay about Florida.
Flying Toward Morning
Days passed and I feared she would sleep forever. That the hospital had put her under a sleeping curse. I told Anne my theory that some doctors were witches, some were fairy godmothers...
If Florida was a man, this is how I’d miss him
Florida calls me ma’am,
calls me darlin’,
calls me Sweet Pea, depending on how well he knows me.
2 Poems
They laughed the day they broke my humerus
and splinted it with wire coat hangers wrapped
in black tape so my skin couldn’t breathe,
so I’d understand honest pain.