Always Crashing

Thanks to @alwayscrashing.bsky.social for running some new pieces by me!

Okay but for real fuck Chris Columbus (the director of Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) (that movie sucks))

An edited tweet that reads “she’s not gonna publish u bro” She will. She will if i post good

When a lit mag I admire follows me back

SEAN ENNIS / BRAMBLE TROPICAL FISH — always crashing BRAMBLE TROPICAL FISH sells birds, amphibians, reptiles, and the insects they eat too. The store also functions as a front for The Old Rats motorcycle gang, who launder cash, mine cryptocurrencies, ...

"Fish are loveless things, really wretched and dirty. In my new capacity as junior sales associate, I often advise customers against actually putting fish in their tanks."

>>> "Bramble Tropical Fish" by Sean Ennis (@seanennis.bsky.social) >>> new today at AC

Us too!

Lovely prose poem / microfiction / whatever. Kind of Pynchonesque but maybe that's just because I'm reading the new Pynchon at the moment.

SEAN ENNIS / BRAMBLE TROPICAL FISH — always crashing BRAMBLE TROPICAL FISH sells birds, amphibians, reptiles, and the insects they eat too. The store also functions as a front for The Old Rats motorcycle gang, who launder cash, mine cryptocurrencies, ...

"Fish are loveless things, really wretched and dirty. In my new capacity as junior sales associate, I often advise customers against actually putting fish in their tanks."

>>> "Bramble Tropical Fish" by Sean Ennis (@seanennis.bsky.social) >>> new today at AC

New work from AC editor @inauthenticity.bsky.social!

See you there?

ALWAYS CRASHING READING & PERFORMANCE SERIES — Comfort Station This is the premiere installment of the ALWAYS CRASHING READING & PERFORMANCE SERIES, which features live readings from contributors to the ALWAYS CRASHING magazine alongside music and visual perf...

Chicago // this Saturday // 7pm, Comfort Station // the inaugural installment of the Always Crashing Reading & Performance Series

feat.
Nat Baldwin
Josh Watkins
Lillie E. Franks (@lilliekoi.bsky.social)
Cajetan Sorich

music by
Barry Paul Clark
Casts

free, all ages

ALWAYS CRASHING READING & PERFORMANCE SERIES — Comfort Station This is the premiere installment of the ALWAYS CRASHING READING & PERFORMANCE SERIES, which features live readings from contributors to the ALWAYS CRASHING magazine alongside music and visual perf...

Chicago // this Saturday // 7pm, Comfort Station // the inaugural installment of the Always Crashing Reading & Performance Series

feat.
Nat Baldwin
Josh Watkins
Lillie E. Franks (@lilliekoi.bsky.social)
Cajetan Sorich

music by
Barry Paul Clark
Casts

free, all ages

italicized text in four columns asking a series of questions

Now at AC // www.alwayscrashing.com/current

italicized text in four columns asking a series of questions

Now at AC // www.alwayscrashing.com/current

thanks @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social! excited to see TRUE FAILURE shortlisted!

Holy Cow read these QUESTIONS now

ORION ALLEN / 2 POEMS — always crashing Matrix Worry A city is half wolves, half wombs. Who determined this body for purpose. What stretches and leeches and loads. The roads are a cube, are matter, are for sale and partitioned. The box has...

"A city is half wolves, half wombs. Who determined this body for purpose."

>>> Orion Allen's "Matrix Worry" and "Questions" >>> New today at AC

www.alwayscrashing.com/current/2025...

"Who Determined This Body for Purpose" featuring half wolves, half wombs, half elegy, half against, half DeKalb, half Had, half reading, half asleep, half sure it's the eighth year, half positive it's the ninth, and B movies. This is NPR.

New email edition features work by Orion Allen, something from the archive by Whitney Koo, updates on Addison Zeller and Alex Tretbar, a terrible confession about Sparks (we like them)

I like to think they have a particular fondness for us because we do things like mail them the printed-out source code for our interactive pieces as nominations

Somehow, inexplicably, the Pushcart committee has once again tracked down our mailing address

ORION ALLEN / 2 POEMS — always crashing Matrix Worry A city is half wolves, half wombs. Who determined this body for purpose. What stretches and leeches and loads. The roads are a cube, are matter, are for sale and partitioned. The box has...

"A city is half wolves, half wombs. Who determined this body for purpose."

>>> Orion Allen's "Matrix Worry" and "Questions" >>> New today at AC

www.alwayscrashing.com/current/2025...

GINA HAY / SIMIA, CUPID — always crashing 1. Mother brings her daughters a picture book from the museum. One charcoal drawing, unlike the others, a shadowy white horse fixed to a shroud of storm clouds. The mother tears Dela away. Mother lik...

New work at the site tomorrow // many new ~things~ in general in upcoming days // but now is a good time to take a moment if you will, won't you, to read or reread Gina Hay's breathtaking, uncanny "Simia, Cupid," up now

GENIUS NIGHT: A Night for Geniuses, on Monday, September 29th at 7pm at Cafe Mustache / TOM McHENRY SARA McHENRY MIKE MIGDALL DEVON PRICE erica dreisbach JOSH WATKINS and KEVIN JOHNSON doing the news quiz from the Skewer

Chicago! New live show announcement, featuring AC ed Josh Watkins! We have been assured this is not standup or improv. Repeat: not standup or improv.

Lyko likes to fool her mother—tonight, on her way home, she will recapture the pardoned frog at the base of the lake, cut through her iliac arteries, the crooks of the thigh. While Dela and the mother sleep, Lyko skulks through the kitchen and smuggles the girl in with the rest. Tomorrow, she will watch her mother gnaw at every anonymous thigh, even the frog that lived but died anyway. Before Dela, Lyko and her mother practiced monkey-see monkey-do: the mother eases the stone out of a plum with a fruit knife and younger Lyko mimics the cupping of the plum empty handed. Lyko laces up one boot and her mother its twin. But the game has finished. When Lyko leaves the house some nights she can sense her mother’s peevish ear on the other side of a wall. The mother refuses to monkey-do. She is brazen, industrious in this refusal. The older woman sits on a rickety swing chair chewing her lower lip. Spare strands of hair go into their quilt for winter. One hand pierces the ventilating needle through the lace cap, the other pulls the hair taut. Pierce, pull, pierce, pull.

Now at AC // www.alwayscrashing.com/current

"Then, oh! The curse!" Featuring eyeless spirits, marrowless care, drone mysticism, cemetery performances, and the top seven fragrances of 2025—so far!

New email edition features work by Gina Hay, an important dispatch on fragrances from AC special correspondent @alec-ivan.bsky.social, plus updates on @perfidiousscript.bsky.social, @raviddice.bsky.social, and an upcoming performance from AC ed Meghan Lamb

@nmwhitley.bsky.social with some kind words about 'Some Column Poems' which were published on @alwayscrashing.bsky.social in July!

www.alwayscrashing.com/current/2025...

Always Crashing? You mean the legendary lit mag? You mean the cultural tour de force of online literary voices? You mean the GOAT of the domain of the English language? Them?

Yeah, it’s them.

In Honor of the day of Sara (the book)'s coming out, here are four more excerpts that were published in the wonderful @alwayscrashing.bsky.social

www.alwayscrashing.com/current/2021...

"Then, oh! The curse!" Featuring eyeless spirits, marrowless care, drone mysticism, cemetery performances, and the top seven fragrances of 2025—so far!

New email edition features work by Gina Hay, an important dispatch on fragrances from AC special correspondent @alec-ivan.bsky.social, plus updates on @perfidiousscript.bsky.social, @raviddice.bsky.social, and an upcoming performance from AC ed Meghan Lamb

Always Crashing Magazine | Substack Our online edition, delivered every two weeks. Click to read Always Crashing Magazine, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

New email edition coming tomorrow >>> watch, as always, yr inboxes

GINA HAY / SIMIA, CUPID — always crashing 1. Mother brings her daughters a picture book from the museum. One charcoal drawing, unlike the others, a shadowy white horse fixed to a shroud of storm clouds. The mother tears Dela away. Mother lik...

"The black bear Dela and the mother brought home this morning is cut on the kitchen floor."

>>> An incantation, a myth, a troubled dream >>> Gina Hay's "Simia, Cupid" >>> new today at AC