Small Press Quotes

“I am running and singing and when it’s raining I’m the only one left on the open street, smiling with my eyes fixed on the sky because it’s cleaning me. I’m the one on the other side of the party, hearing laughter and the emptying of bottles while I peacefully make my way to the river, a lonely road, following the smell of the ocean. I’m the one waking up at 4am to witness the sunrise, where the sky touches the sea, and I hold my elbows, grasping tight to whatever I’ve made of myself.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one.

“Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper.

The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes.

“You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man.

“Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.”

“I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.”

“So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?”

“Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?”

Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock.

“He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor.

“Who is he?”

“A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.”
― Jeff Phillips, Turban Tan

“Twirling the breeze like it's cotton candy,
I'm not the one they marry-
Every thirsty Thursday and drowned Sunday,
I collect them all and carry

The gypsy heart is too romanticized;
Whispers that scream down your spine
Never the Hellfire pain that's advertised,
only dancing with the wine”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Altered States of the Unflinching Souls

“I don't let boys make me cry
I write rhymes and fucking fly
Been to Hell- check out my wrists
Came back King- check out my Mist

-from 'Came Back KIng”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Confessions of a D3AD Petal

“arranged the pillows
on my bed to make it
look like a coffin

best three hours
of sleep in months


-from the book
Altered States of The Unflinching Souls”
― J.J. Campbell

“pissing on photos, we wake
parched
in parallel realities
i still end up drowning
in visions

he settles for the horror;
hostage
to the oddity of normal-
comfy spot mirage,

as he makes the bed daily
so he can lie in it and
be secret sad boy; he settles
to sleepwalk with fantasy,
slitting the throat of actual
possibility, begging
for a hand job to get through the day,
making friends with locked doors
and collectors of cookie cutters”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Altered States of the Unflinching Souls