Marcus Slease's Blog

New Horror Microfiction: “Potatoes of Promise”

I have a new horror micro story at the magazine CUL-DE-SAC OF BLOOD
Farmers and swines full of demons. Robot cows that don’t moo. Whales in the wall of motel 6. And a man with deer antlers.

My newest microfiction, “Potatoes of Promise,” is live now — a surreal piece of rural horror where the harvest isn’t what it seems.

Thank you to the editors J †Johnson and Gina Myers.

Read it here  https://www.culdesacofblood.com/marcus-silcock

I’m thrilled to share that my surreal micro story “Big Fish” appears in the October 2025 issue of Flash Frontier — the Fish Issue.
Read it here: Flash Frontier – October 2025 Issue

“Big Fish” is a short, absurd story about what it means to live inside something vast — a creature, a system, a world — and to keep scrubbing ourselves clean, hoping to come out pure before we’re belched into nothingness.

It’s strange and a little slippery, part satire, part quiet dread. Maybe it’s about futility. Maybe it’s about faith. Either way, it’s about the fish we all live in.

Thanks to the editors at Flash Frontier for featuring “Big Fish” in the fish issue. If you read it, I’d love to hear what surfaces for you.

A few weeks ago, I read some new microfiction for The Mercurius Show at the Lit Balm reading series. Lit Balm is an interactive livestream poetry reading series that features readings, panels, and open mics, often held biweekly.

LIT BALM is brought to you by Marc Vincenz of MadHat and New American Writing (Magazine), Cassandra Atherton of Westerly Magazine, and Jeffrey Cyphers Wright of LIVE Mag!. Most Saturdays at 5:00 pm East Coast time.

It was approaching midnight in Spain when I read and there was some magic there. The good energy of the old spirits of indie presses and creative spaces.

The video of my reading, along with others, including the rest of the Mercurius editorial team, is now on youtube.

Check it out here.

I’m delighted to share that my story “Burning Bush” has just been published in Issue Forty-Seven of the always-exciting magazine Bending Genres!

I’m thrilled and honored to be in such terrific company — with new work by Kim Magowan, Francine Witte, Glen Pourciau, and many more bold, brilliant voices pushing the boundaries of form and feeling.

A bit about the magazine: Bending Genres is a vibrant literary journal devoted to hybrid, experimental, and genre-defying writing. Since its launch, it has carved out a home for the strange, the surreal, the emotionally raw, and the stylistically adventurous.

Burning Bush is a surreal, absurd story about forbidden desires and passion set within a strange, heightened religious world. It begins:

“Knot your neckties. Thick as the bishop’s handshake. The smell of starch starching the air. Welcome to Sunday.”

There’s fire. Ritual. A bishop who spits flame. Worship, confusion, longing — and perhaps a little Anne of Green Gables.

You can read it now at Bending Genres:
Burning Bush

And while you’re there, I encourage you to dive into the rest of Issue 47 — it’s full of wild, inventive, and moving work that defies easy categorization.

Thanks for reading — and for supporting the strange.

Tomorrow we continue the Mercurius surreal absurd show at Backstory Books in Barcelona. Another round of readings. Another dream map improv.

The dream map improv will involve the audience this time. Since there are only three readers (Marcus Silcock, Thomas Helm, Hugh Beim-Steinberg).

“The program will feature short readings from poets in the anthology, followed by a collective, interactive activity: the Dream Map. Together, poets and audience will create an improvised surreal world on paper — naming new lands, seas, and landmarks inspired by the poems themselves. The event will conclude with a guided journey through this dreamscape, led by the poets and enriched by the audience’s imagination.”

The Mercurius surreal absurd show was terrific at Dorothy Circus Gallery in London. A real feast of the imagination with an improv dream map. The space was also delicious with dream rugs. We read surreal absurd stories and poems by flashlight and improvised a performance on the dream map (soon to appear on Spotify with music and some remixing).

You can buy the terrific Mercurius Surreal Absurd anthology over here.

It’s one of a kind!

I’m happy to share that two of my prose poems appear in the inaugural issue of Rawhead Literary Journal — alongside brilliant voices like Meg Pokrass, Brad Rose, Jeff Friedman, and many more fab writers.

Read my other prose poem, and the full issue here:
https://rawheadjournal.org/issue-one/template-2/

The September 20, 2025 episode of Lit Balm: An Interactive Livestream Reading Series will be the MERCURIUS show, and feature Vik Shirley, Thomas Helm, Marcus Silcock, and Ben Niespodziany! As always, we’ll begin with poems from our hosts and end with an open mic. It’s gonna be a doozy!

I am going to read a prose poem from the Mercurius surreal-absurd anthology and then some new microfiction from my book in progress: Reality Bites.

If you fancy tuning in, click HERE

Mercurius anthology of surreal absurd is out in the world. A joy to co-edit this puppy. Terrific online launch. A reading marathon of 18 readers. Other launches coming soon in London at Dorothy Gallery and Edinburgh, Scotland and Barcelona, Spain.

Double Whammy: Two New Micro Fictions Just Dropped!

I’m thrilled to share two fresh micro fictions out in the wild.

Set in Northern Ireland, this piece dives into the immigrant experience through the lens of a judo master with a secret.
Published by Maudlin House.

Read The Judo King

A love hotel in Seoul.
License plates covered.
Desire, disguise, and the strange choreography of intimacy.
Published by Blood+Honey Lit.

Read Wiggle