CLASH Books

Generative rather than directive, the poem magnifies the small, overlooked moments in life; explores flickering thoughts, impressions, impulses; and wallows joyfully in unending confusion.

Writers are the channels of these spirits & if that sounds like witchcraft that's because it is. These stories gave me chills. Sylvia Plath & Lana Del Rey course through the veins of these dark, sexy, mind-bending, fantastical, romantic, & haunting tales. Authors from different genres came together in their love & passion for these muses.

No Name Atkins gives voice to the Manson family's most notorious member, chronicling in verse her descent into violence. How does someone like Susan Atkins become a killer? These poems unfurl the bizarre, hallucinatory, and terrifying moments that led to one of America's most reviled stories of devotion and death.

Forged in a dumpster fire of toxic Elvises, these poems are pornographic bad romances, psychedelic love dirges, and threnodies for sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. They'll make you laugh off the pain as much as you'll cry, cringe, and feel exposed in this 'No Boys Allowed' clubhouse of feminine rage and healing.

Humanitarian Dr. Salio discovers that the children living there need assistance and to be studied, but is there any cure for when tradition and horror are one and the same? The Whores, The Dealer and The Diamond The most beautiful things are found in the darkest of places, just as hope is found in the darkest of moments. Sometimes darkness overcomes them all. Popobawa You can find everything in Zanzibar. It grows on the side of the road, shinning white baobabs, pineapples, nutmeg, and the essence of Chanel N°5. And demons. Black and Gold A mischievous spirit walks the beaches of Dakar at twilight. Sometimes for good, oftentimes not. Sometimes to protect his people, but sometimes protection is its own prison.

Within its pages, the line between eroticism and terror, desire and death, is blurred. Damaged souls hurtle, as if in a dream, toward mutilation, transformation and fates worse than death. It is literary hardcore fiction for fans of David Cronenberg, Junji Ito, and Clive Barker.

These are just some of the stories that will warp your sense of reality until you’re living in Brett Petersen’s mind and you won’t want to leave.

Daniel Knauf brings the darkness and surrealism fans have grown to love, but brings a vulnerability and intimacy that makes each poem memorable and enjoyable. It is noir with heart and a coda for the soul. Darkness and light vying for dominance in poems that go from personal and confessional to rambunctiously fantastical. A heady dive into the abyss of love and other monsters. Daniel Knauf is a true storyteller.

Seriously! This is an extremely important book and if you do not bring this book back, you risk letting out a chaos magick spell that will destroy the world, as beasts bring destruction to life itself. That includes bunnies. Do you really want to face killer bunnies, and don't think Charlize Theron will save you. She won’t! So read this extremely important horror book and then bring it back, and also don’t look at Internet porn at your local library, it’s rude and attracts succubi! Sincerely, CLASH Books Librarian

The results are almost always (unintentionally) laughable. Kaleita doesn't need to go undercover to report from the front lines, though. She's been living there her entire life. There's a raw authenticity to her voice. Her writing is unpretentious yet inventive, riddled with a healthy dose of black humor...If I were her manager, I would fire her on the spot after reading this book. Not because she's a lawsuit waiting to happen--she might be--but because This Book Is Brought To You By My Student Loans makes it clear the job she's most qualified for is being a writer. -- Andrew Shaffer, author of Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery

She cries and cries and finally she is exiled to the cenote, where her tears endlessly fill the giant sink hole. She becomes a big tourist attraction. People come from miles to see Marcrina cry into the cenote— part prisoner, part carnival attraction, part saint, Marcrina’s story is one of heartbreak, love, and endurance. This is the story of Lune, of Marcrina, of Lune’s son Nico, and of a strange place called Cenote City, where the world of magic and the dead entwines with daily life in enchanting and unsettling ways.

This summer, before they start tenth grade, they’ll lose their virginities. But things go awry, and Jay’s anger, fueled by his involvement with a white supremacist group, throws the friends into turmoil. When Bennet and Jay take desperate measures to escape their problems, they encounter unhappily divorced men, Florida swamp monsters, and bizarre strangers, until all their worst decisions begin to implode the world around them.

It’s a relief when Vernon discovers a space inside the walls of his bedroom, a space inhabited by a mysterious girl named Violet. Violet’s nothing like Vernon. She’s pretty and cool, and she has a closetful of cute clothes. But as Vernon and Violet become friends, Vernon starts to realize that she’s much more like him than he thought, leading him down a fairy-tale path of self-discovery. Out of the closet and into the world.

Her family is dysfunctional but her boyfriend— known only as "My Boyfriend"— has a family who is emotionally and physically abusive. Looking for alternatives to the lives of the women who surround her, June becomes obsessed with the actress Jean Seberg (best known for her starring role in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless) as well as Joan of Arc. After being raped by an acquaintance, June withdraws and begins to live mostly through Seberg's films. Offered these lives as alternatives to her own, June is left to wonder: Can anyone truly transcend their circumstances, or does having a dream mean death—  literally and metaphorically?

It consists of a series of linked documentary poems composed of appropriated language from U.S. government documents, such as: the Immigration and Nationality Act; the U.S. patent for Taser hand-held stun guns; materials from the Office of English Language Programs designed to instruct immigrants on assimilation into U.S. culture; and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Use of Force Policy, Guidelines and Procedures Handbook.

Try Not to Think Bad Thoughts collects over 150 pieces of absurdist collage, watercolor, and ink, imbued with humor, horror, sex, heart, and surreal love.

A breathless journey, at once fevered, visionary and breathtakingly alive, it invites the reader to find wilderness and brutality in the banal, the beautiful in the bizarre and to seek answers, not in the sum, but in the derangement of its many seething parts.

It seamlessly interweaves experience with elements of sociology and psychology, exploring how one cultivates an identity containing multitudes— queer, trans, mixed-race, other.

As he ventures out into the world, he's dumbfounded to discover that he is ensconced in a city of memory with people from his past: teachers, camp counselors, beloved sitcom stars, and they relish Josh's presence, celebrating everything he does. He is in a personalized paradise. In reality, Josh is in a coma. Intercut between his story, Steph, his younger sister, quarrels with their parents in a hospital room over what is to be done with her vegetative brother. Their various conversations manifest physically in his coma. The longer Josh is submerged, the more peril his brain is in as neurons die off. The familiar faces that once brought comfort will be replaced with ghoulish masks. He'll learn this place has malevolent intentions as it threatens to devour his soul.

Vague memories of road trips, skateboarding, the ocean, and ping-pong are all reconstructed in the shape of a barn and set on fire. We're not even sure they're poems. Maybe they are just: BARN. Go ahead, take off your shoes and drive off a cliff. The barn awaits.

La Belle Ajar is a collection of poems inspired by Plath’s 1963 novel that reimagines the journey of Esther Greenwood within the empowering odyssey of these 20 scintillating cento poems that honor the voice and legacy of America’s most influential modern poet and author: Sylvia Plath.

In that sense, I'm not relentless, but perhaps I'm unrelenting. I could relent if I wanted to. But he always has to die. I mean "always" in two senses: at all times and all of the time. I can't kill him all of the time. That would take too long. But all of the times I did, I did. I'd do it again. I could relent if I wanted to, but instead I'd do it again. If he's different, then he's the same and if he's the same, he's got to go. If he were different and not the same, then there would be two things and I'd only have to kill one of them. If only I only had to kill one of him. What a life I would live, if only I only had to kill him the one time. But death doesn't always do him in.

Part prophecy, part literary collage, and part social justice remix, it's a wholly immersive, intertextual sojourn. More than just a damning indictment of our contemporary moment, Silverfish is fiction written both for and after the end of history.

As the visions manifest with greater frequency they start targeting his young daughter. They are finding their way into his world and only he can fight them. Chris must uncover the truth about his connection to this strange, sadistic realm, and plunge headfirst into the unknown if he wants to save his daughter and himself.

Desperate to secure herself, she takes up residence in an aged house closer to the graveyard, closer to the lost souls that sense her torment and are determined to take her place in the mortal world. As she tries to tame and free the ghostly figures around her, she becomes acquainted with the owners of the home, the recently orphaned siblings, Eric, Audrey and Christian Tarter. Yet, the souls she wants to save are on edge as a horrific serial killer runs rampant, giving Helena a boost in business and suspicion. Against her best efforts, Helena is suddenly thrown into a bloody mystery where new and old friendships are tested, innocents are maimed and a horrific family secret that threatens her chance at a peaceful existence and her existence itself.

This is our first transmission. Welcome to Black Telephone Magazine.

Above all, Points of Attack is a handbook of the ways of the good life in bad times, and an inoculation against presumption in an era when the axioms of liberal democratic life have come undone and the end of history once again appears a long way off.

Named for the famous thought experiment, it concerns estranged twin brothers who reunite at their father's funeral to discover they no longer look alike. Haunted by the past (and possibly the future), they move into their father's house to settle his affairs, only to reignite old rivalries and uncover long-hidden secrets, most of which involve the young woman who lives next door. An epistolary work comprised of excerpts from various memoirs, novels, screenplay adaptations, and documents of public record, The Paradox Twins is an experimental, sci-fi ghost story about the scariest, most unknowable quantity there is-family.

From inadvertently coming out to his Polish immigrant parents, to immersing himself in the world of New York City nightlife, and finding himself and his voice in comedy. Born to Be Public is a vulnerable and poignant exploration of identity (and the rediscovery of it), mental health, sex and relationships, all while pursuing a passion with victories and tragicomic blunders. At once raw and relatable, Mania's one-of-a-kind voice will make you shed tears from laughter and find its way into your heart.

She confronts a dying planet and an emerging sense of self. She puts herself in the hands of men--some of her oldest friends--who may have come to save her, a contemporary Penelope with a raft of suitors and unspent erotic capital. Is it possible for a woman to reclaim her life and set its terms without succumbing to suicide or submission? At once intimate and sprawling, this book is an examination of the stories we are told--and the stories we tell ourselves--about identity, permanence, and meaning in our beautiful, hostile world.

But as he explores the cuckolding lifestyle, he finds himself tugging at threads that threaten to unravel his marriage, his town, and himself. With empathy and humor, debut author Jackie Ess crafts a kaleidoscopic meditation on marriage, manhood, dreams, basketball, sobriety, and the secret lives of Oregonians.