template you can use
dear [animal i love],
i am afraid i have become [a terrorsome thing].
[a past wrong] stays with me still.
i wonder if you are [feeling] with me after all of this time.
please. forgive [what you can].
Hey. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How is the world treating you these days? Oh, you too, huh? Can you imagine anything we’d rather come back to you with than these five poems from Kristin Lueke? We’ve been fans of Lueke’s work for years, and were absolutely thrilled to see her work in our submissions.¹ These five are heartbreaking, formally weird, and beautifully controlled while at each moment risking everything.
/ Programming Notes: Always Crashing Reopening for Submissions June 1
AC will be reopening for submissions for our online edition on June 1 via our new Submissions Manager.
What are we looking for? Let me quote:
“Always Crashing is looking for submissions of fiction, poetry, collage text, visual collage, video, labyrinths, manifestos, the generically transgressive, and nonfiction (though we prefer not to be told if it’s nonfiction).
We are interested in surfaces and form. We are interested in discontinuity and want to watch you break things. We want to read works that seek something via untruth, fantasy, artificiality, the plastic, deep superficiality, and attention to their own construction. We are interested in work that strikes curious poses; in the ‘experimental,’ not as an avant-garde, but as a furthering of a subterranean literary tradition. We are interested, ultimately, in the aesthetic: the beautiful and the sublime, sure, but also the boring, the dumb, the merely interesting, the zany, the disgusting, the cute—particularly when pushed into strange and unfamiliar territories.”
Honestly tho the answer to “What are we looking for?,” is, no surprise, to take a look at our archive, and then send us something better than we could’ve ever imagined.
Thank you x1000 to Bull City Press in Durham NC for hosting our Submissions Manager. They’re great. You should check them out. And if you happen to be in Durham, NC, you should say hello to our managing editor.
/ Programming Notes, pt. 2: Some of You Have Offered to Give Us Money. How Do We Plan to Use It?
After some internal discussion, we’re planning to open up the ability for readers to donate money to AC through Substack subscriptions. We plan to use this money, first, to cover our webhosting and operational costs. Any money beyond that, we plan to use to pay writers. Beyond that, we’re interested in publishing a new print issue (though honestly, we have legit no idea how to conceptualize how the bizarro ever-changing tariffs might affect such things atm).
None of our editors got into the lit magazine editing game with the idea of like, making much or really any money from this, so that’s fairly far down on our list. If we can manage to cover our costs and pay writers and do cool things and still somehow have money left over, we’re not entirely opposed to this becoming an actual paying job. Just like, it’s reasonable to note that’s kinda rare in the lit magazine world.
We’ll be contacting everyone who has offered to pay money through Substack before we turn payments on to say thank you, and we’ll be listing all of our supporters (with their permission) on our website.
Steps
Stone, hewn from last boulder left alone in Sonoran Desert, taken down from on high by indifferent wind, no witnesses to act but one who, having seen boulder fall, must carry it to where it belongs next. Simple geometry of steps, likely having distinction of being one completely uniform aspect of architecture spanning and connecting millennia of different cultures that avoided crossing paths until Novice of Steps walked familiar device of assisting protuberances in a foreign land, must lay tired eyes upon fundamental convenience of all humanity. This is not to say building on ground level with no elevation is design for faulty construction, lest ground level construction provides steps that go down only towards basement or other sublevel below sleeping minds of Novice of Steps; in which case, it is preferable to have at least same number, if not more, of levels going up to different floors to flatten out pataphysical deficiency of structure in implying how subconscious directs itself to primal forms such as those of Lascaux or sturm und drang of washing machine I frequently deal with when not painting. Remind myself this is because I own nothing but merely pass through material in all its phases and oscillations, thus I retain orderless entropy from inevitable traps of possession itself, and there I cannot wait upon steps, fearing I will see too well what I am waiting for. Despite its own waiting on steps outside has sad domesticity to it, mangy black cat I have christened Moma sympathizes with prodigal’s inclination towards uneasy repentance. Dignity of steps resides with those beyond their periphery, leading upwards. But if those same steps were built down, still outside, this may lead into excavated area where Novice of Steps sees how they travel beneath flattening of the world, where topmost layer of polluted reason will soon give way. Immediate problems including soil erosion, alluvial displacement, and tectonic mishaps, to name a few, would be a concern, so reinforcement of exposed side arrived at, then, preferably with drainage supplied for cistern beneath area vacated for structure, will be required feature. Otherwise. Better to stand on steps than be stood upon. Regardless, risk stubbornly dawdles unless width of steps is enough to accommodate both entrants and exeunts. Nothing so unfriendly as narrow steps. Benefit of this structure, having to stand to look up above top level to see anything, means not missing anything because of poor angle of visibility from substrata’s interference. Sitting on steps, too, has its self-effacing nobility, one tested by every poet and philosopher imaginable, as act imitates original boulder displaced in accidental manner to become hewn stone by an eventually shifting earth. This act constitutes sort of faith rare in humanity: it does not play games with steps necessary for entrants and exeunts of conventional disposition. Entry or exit not achievable is grossest stain for any building and a fascinating proposition here. Virgil finds his way into and out of Hell easily enough, barring arbitrary assistance. What then? No, we keep to our steps so because, if anything, there will always be steps for their own sake, entailing measure of our more gradual natures. Never can entrant or exeunt gain access by leaps and bounds, hence painful reminder of our limitations, having to look upwards and calculating with reverberating echo of resigned sigh how many steps we must climb or descend before realizing landing will be unobtainable. Whether above or below, it is better to stop, go inside, and cease with steps. This may explain noted obsession in some cultures of traversing many steps as spiritual purification, or in archetypal sublimations resembling modest prize-fighter in training as he anticipates what is certain to be his pyrrhic victory. Corrupted steps have that sort of cheap, popular sentimentality, I quietly lament to Moma, placing chipped saucer of expired milk at his weather-beaten paws, its reach flailing from streets, as we continue to look for our next set of steps. As I am stepping out onto my steps, pitiable Moma, before I leave you to tend to what remains in my wrecked studio, how I am also left to wonder my arrival on these same steps where you now sit and drink and sleep, buried in your relentless waiting for whatever else lies beyond my shadow. A building is where I wait and stay as well, steps to further steps and eventual end, steps unnecessary and never stepped upon. Incalculable, this number of missing steps to achieve required stepping for me and for all, whether to step up or down, as I look down at my feet to see what is lost. I figure, based on your brave scampering across the ragged avenue, there are at least three steps along my usual path waiting to be reclaimed, merged with stairwell inside, unless I also discover missing steps leading down into the center of the building where I suspect a sort of burial mound of accumulated dirt no one has seen since its construction resides, this whole building having sprung up around it by human hands, leaving forgotten earth to be tended by register of silent monologue, I am a mere basement for people to do their dim laundry, place their leaky water pipes, hang their fizzling circuit breakers. Also for spiders to suspend their patient webs and gift this world its swarming children to fear should they all converge at a single place, upon their own steps which cannot be built with missing steps I have found for them.
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