Announcement: New Journal

After listening to your feedback, and considering lessons learned from previous projects, we are pleased to announce a new format for submissions at Orchid’s Lantern. The website will now operate as a quarterly online journal, opening for set periods throughout the year, with a fresh theme every 3 months. There will then be an annual print journal, collecting all accepted submissions from the previous 12 months together with some brand new material from invited authors.

Our first theme is Dreams! Tell us your wildest. Explore the visions, the language, of sleep. Think surreal and peculiar; think repeating motifs and layered metaphor. Imagine a precognitive unconscious, paralysis, waking up in a different land… Surprise us. It’s up to you.

Full details can be found on our Submissions page.

July 19, 2022 0

Flash Showcase: Rus Khomutoff – Untitled

I OBLIVIATE MYSELF INTO THE WHOLE LIKE A NAKED FLAME A NAME BEYOND DESIRE/TO EXIST BETWEEN ETERNITIES WILD NOTHING WITH EYES OF THE SKY/AXIS INFINITY DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE BLISS/COME FORWARD WITH YOUR VISCERA & VIOLENCE AND SHARE MY WINGS/UNLEASH YOUR SPIRIT BENEATH THE RAMJET ALLEGRO TEMPLE OF THE NIGHT SKY A NEED FOR MIRRORS & COUNTLESS SKIES/SHAKE YOUR INFINESSENCE SLOT CANYON HIGHBREATH BIRDFLOWER OF MY BECOMING/PARACOSM OF NEX MEMORY FORAGING A MOMENT & SUMMONING UP A BLACK FLAME/ARM OF EXUBERANCE SHORE OF ELAN/VENUS ENDEAVOR MINISTERING BLITHE SPIRITS/REACTION OUT OF MY HEAD/AUTUMN CRY OPULENCE LIKE A TRIANGLE & A DUEL/MELANCHOLY OF TRIBE SAD CAFE IMMORTAL CREAM TERMINAL SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS/CHAMELEON CHARADE STAR CODE CHALICE WONDERMENT CYCLORAMA/MEMORYISANISLAND PYLONS OF RED DUST SNAKING WITH MELANCHOLY/A FACE OF GENIUS IN FULL MEASURE OF THE SPECTACULAR NOW/IDEAPHORIA SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER KARTHIK FLOW/NEON METAPHOR GHOSTROCK OF THE SPLENDID RUINS/MECHANISMS OF YOUTH TRY NOT TO UNDERSTAND IMPOSSIBLE POISON/EROTIC BIRD WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON/TENDER SYMMETRY GLASS ANIMALS LIFE ITSELF/OF RAPTURE DEEP INTO THE NIGHT THE ARMOR OF MANY THOUGHTS/THE LUNAR SCHISM IS RUNNING WILD

My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am an experimental poet in Brooklyn, NY. I have published 3 collections of poetry: Immaculate Days (Alien Buddha Press), Radia(Void Front Press) & Color Poems (Orbis Tertius Press). My poetry has appeared in Triplov, X-Peri, Problematique, Grody mag, Proprose, isacoustic & Ink Pantry.

February 6, 2022 0

Flash Showcase: Untitled Poster Poem by Rus Khomutoff

Poster Poem Image and Words Copyright Rus Khomutoff

My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am an experimental poet in Brooklyn, NY. I have published 3 collections of poetry: Immaculate Days (Alien Buddha Press), Radia (Void Front Press) and Color Poems (Orbis Tertius Press). My poetry has appeared in Triplov, X-Peri, Problematique, Grody mag, Proprose, Isacoustic and Ink Pantry.

Details on how to submit your own flash pieces for our Showcase can be found on the Submissions page.

August 29, 2021 0

Writers on Lockdown: Kenny Mooney

Kenny Mooney’s books are experimental, ‘unapologetically nihilistic’ prose poems that skillfully thrust the reader into new perspectives. In the first of a new series of interviews, I caught up with him to chat about isolation, writing style, philosophical influence, and the importance of ambiguity in literature.

Hi Kenny, welcome to Writers on Lockdown!

Thank you for having me!

So how are you faring in these strange times – is isolation beneficial to your creative process or a hindrance?

The isolation isn’t a problem for me. I’m an introverted, fairly anti-social person, so being told to stay indoors and not socialise is basically my life. I’m amused at how many people, mostly those I work with, have been going on about how they don’t know how they’re going to manage, and it’s been about a week. I imagine them already chewing their fingernails down. These will be the fucking idiots buying all the food in the supermarkets.

Isolation definitely benefits my creative process though. I’m not the kind of person who can write around other people, I need a totally separate space that I can control and manage. Not that I’ve been writing very much lately, but when I do, having somewhere away from other people is certainly required. I guess because this whole situation isn’t actually that much different to my normal life, for me, I don’t feel as compelled to take advantage of the lockdown and do something creative.

I think pressure to be productive can have a negative effect on output for creatives. Would you agree?

I would definitely agree, at least for me. Different people respond to different stimuli, but in my experience, pressure is not a great way to encourage creativity. And I think that can often be part of the problem for writers, and other artists. We put ourselves under so much pressure to reach some arbitrary level, be it a particular word count, or to be original or funny, experimental, or whatever. I think if people just relaxed and let the work be itself, to arrive in its own way, they’d be happier, and maybe more productive. But who knows. I’m wary of giving or listening to writing advice. Do whatever works for you.

Continue reading →

April 5, 2020 3

Emanations II

Is that a uterus or a spaceman with his arms outstretched? The rose-lit dome I visit in my dreams has begun to play tricks on me over the last few nights. The hospital say it’s one of the signs. I know that should terrify me, but it doesn’t. It just makes me feel I’ve been taking the pills properly.

His thoughts are channeling through my veins. I can hear him in my spleen. He’s saying something important.

“I don’t know if you can understand me. They say you can’t, that you aren’t developed enough. But I believe there’s a chance, and it feels only right for me to talk to you. I’ll be the provider of your nourishment, after all. I’ll be your guide. So we need to establish our bond, don’t we? You need to know it’s all going to be ok.

You are in the womb of the fourth dimension. Everything you’ve learned in your ‘lifetime’ is simply the pieces clicking into place to prepare you for a normal birth up here. You have to learn three to know four. All the sights, sounds, smells: they’re chemical reactions as your mind builds itself. Side effects. Echoes. A vague awareness of what’s beyond.

Linear time is a weird phenomenon that happens only while in the womb, too. I can’t imagine what that’s like. But please know that all the mental suffering, the cognitive dissonance, and the sense of taking a one way trip is because you are not here. You are not where you belong. You are contained in a space of limitations that is unnatural to our kind. You are but a cross-section of what your whole self will be.

When you take your infinite breath, there’ll be treasures you can’t imagine. I promise you that, my angel. Movement without boundaries, and a plane of time. You and me. One more pill. Just one more pill.”

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

~ C S Lewis.

***

‘Emanations’ is an experiment in automatic (but human) fiction writing. The words come from states of meditation, excitement, or indifferent vacuity and are subject only to the lightest touch of editing. They are intended to be read as streams of consciousness to open windows to the back rooms of the mind.

March 12, 2019 0