BareBack
Home of the Brave
Welcome to BareBack
May 2013
Featured Fiction
Check out Bareback Magazine to read Poetry by Alice Vam, Julia Orenstein, Valentina Solovieff, James Diaz, Patrick Walsh, Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto, Gary Beck, Poppy Taylor, Amit Herlekar, Bamgbose Gabriel, Summer Nolan, Steven Vest, Laurent H, G. David Swartz
Therapy and Treatment: A collection of acrylics by South Korean artist Choi Yunnam explores beauty standards and the entrapment of femininity through surrealistic images and ultra-vivid colors.
Thought of the Month
Danni Zeigler is an American artist who uses animal bones to create abstract sculptures with the intention of implanting ideas in your mind through his titles. Essentially, his goal is to convince you what painted bones stuck together with super glue resemble. But it’s up to you to decide. Have a look at Leftovers.
This Month's Poetry
TONY MULAS is a both a Canadian poet and the owner of a construction company. Most of his poems are autobiographical and based on true life experiences. He writes from a place of pureness and honesty, evoking powerful images and a sensuous mood. Read the whimsical words of Tony Mulas.
Featured Poets
Keith Moul is a retired insurance manager currently living in the Pacific N.W. He alters an original photo with five priorities in mind, and seeks “realism,” but vibrancy in his photos JUST LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT
Archive Poets
Previously Featured Artists
Eleanor Bennett is an award winning photographer and artist. Solid Structure is a selection of images focusing on biology and natural anatomy, bone structure, patterns, and fossils.
Previously Featured Poets
All work appearing on this site is the property of the artists
Camryn Barganier is a spoken word poet, performer, author and presenter and a graduate from the University of Houston. Her poetry is a combination of real life, and fiction, intertwining personal experiences with creative thought.
DEATH TO POSTMODERNISM by Peter Jelen is a contemptuous exhibit of the pop culture mindset and the notion of reproduction and the infinitely reproducible in postmodernism, and questions the idea of adaptation, pastiche, and parady.
On the way to a funeral, a young girl and her family stop in a rural café, where she is accidentally left behind and she is surprised to find herself in an exciting but peaceful world without them. Read LEFT by Autumn Rinaldi
Geraldine O’Kane is an Irish poet with a passion for connecting to people through poetry. She is currently pursuing a degree in Art and Fashion, and has cofounded a poetry and arts performance group called Voica Versa.
Joshua Vegas is a Toronto-based self-taught graphite pencil artist, with a minimalist flair. After experimenting with various mediums, Joshua finds ease and comfort in using graphite pencil due to both its accessibility and versatility. Check out art by Joshua Vegas
When Marlow finally decides to turn his heinous deeds in for a picture perfect existence, the pain he inflicted upon others comes back to him in a way that is indescribable. Unbelievable Consequences by Eva Echo Edwardson
Cuthbert has done something so extraordinary, so entirely un-Cuthbertish, that his life will probably never be the same. And the one person who realizes this is really pissed off about it. Read Cuthbert by Marc Cohen
Tune in and join this hilarious little community as they seek the meaning of life...and a missing cat. Read Joy in the Night by Jane Kahramanidis.
Jesse Myner
Mike Thorn
Theresa Nyenhuis
SAM SILVA is an accomplished poet who believes that “Art is similar to religion (whether or not the artist is a theist) and artists are both mystics and scribes or at very least priests who are given a passion and devotion in a kind of unique way.” Read the poems of Sam Silva.
ERIC DITTMAR lives in Ajax, a town in Ontario, Canada. He has a mechanical engineering degree from Cleveland State University. His poetry career began in grade seven when his teacher made a big fuss over the first poem he ever wrote and his “ego took it from there.”
MARC CARVER has published over three hundred poems around the world and has published six collections of poetry. He is currently working on several anthologies but most of all, the only important thing to him, is that people enjoy his work and hopefully someone else will start writing poetry.
Wendy Landkammer is mostly self taught. She the studied textiles and bead design for ten years.The last ten years she has studied both watercolor and ball point pen as a fine art media. She resides in South Dakota. View the work of Wendy Landkammer
Persephone pays a male student to write a paper and is willing to do anything to make the grade. A dream is shattered, and the corruption of a university is revealed. Read The Prostitute
A calm spring morning is suddenly interrupted by Brian and the murderous woman who pushes through kitchen screen with a gun stuck in his back. Read Brian’s Head by Mauri Orr Stone
Previously Featured Fiction
Archive Flash Fiction
The internal fiction of Helliwell’s invented and autobiographical worlds is placed alongside art historical references which allude to a dialogue between artifice and reality. Check out Paul Helliwell
Cece is driving fast by Snake River when something happens that changes her course in life. She starts to see things none of the rest of us can, and that leads to some startling revelations. Read “Driving Snake River” by Marla Cantrell
A decent man’s life is turned upside down after a chance encounter with a beautiful woman. Read Wild Meg by Farida Samerkhanova
Nick Ransom is a young writer living and creating in upstate New York. Inspired by everything from long nights spent watching the city, to quiet afternoons in the cemetery, Nick Ransom is a hopeless romantic at heart. When not writing or making art, Ransom can usually be found guzzling massive quantities of tea, hoarding Magic the Gathering cards, or rambling about any number of things with his partner.
Kevin Thornburgh is a southern California poet who likes to study the poetry of China as well as write all forms of verse. He earned an MFA at Antioch LA, and his work is to be found on Amazon.com. He has published four books of poetry and memoir, the latest called Birdbath poems. He hopes to add humor to his poems as well as the erotic spirit.
Adam McLennon is a self-taught Scotish artist who resides in New Hampshire. He has been painting for nearly five years and has held solo exhibits in Glasgow and London. His work employes simple shapes and warm colors in order to create an unintrusive neutral ascthetic.
When nothing is certain, reality itself becomes subjective. All John Wilson can be sure of is his own consciousness, but even his mind might just be his own horrific hallucination. Read Cogito Ergo Sum by Carter Fourqurean
Plot’s here and he isn’t going anywhere until someone tells him why he’s been ditched like last year’s fashion and no one cares about him anymore. Read A Man Named Plot by Justin Carmickle
Venus Fly Trap
Anne Anderson
THINGS OF LIFE WE LOST
Konrad Noronha
Existence
Nathalie Riel
Scavengers
Brishbhanu Baruah
I FIND NO WORD TO CURSE
Juhi Chowdhury
Baby Please
Jayme Severance
Whiskey Diaries
Tess Kursel
Time Travelers
Christian McPherson
Criminal
Mia Zanette
Literature of The Latrine
Nate Burley
Back in Town
Miguel Eichelberger
Spare room
Matthew Walpole
trigger.
Shannon Shuster
The People
J.C. Balcray
Everything Hurts & Nothing is Beautiful
Amara Schertz
THREE A.M.
Salvatore Difalco
Resting the Eyes
Robert Sandercott
CROSSING IMAGINARY BORDERS
Howie Good
So That Her Body Could Be Admired
Bill Wolak
THE POLITICS OF DEATH
Poppy Scarlett
Untitled
Patricia Jones
Happy Town
Kellen Davis
Rest in Peace, my Brothers
Jerard Hutchinson
release
Adrien Aniceto
Hallucigenia Magna
Ross McCooey
MOURNING
Vinodkumar Edachery
Rain
John M. Marshall
Lesson From a Zen Master
Larry Schug
Zombie Physics
James M. Taggart
MARRIAGE STRAIGHT TO VIDEO
David Whippman
Neverending Present
Stephen P.B. West
Mysterious Medication
Matt Smiley
The Pen
Alyssa Cooper
A Dream
Janet Thorning
Read BareBack poets in the
A golden-spooner is in for the surprise of his life when he tries to campaign in the one place he should never set foot. Read At Last, A Fun Day At Work by Thomas Sullivan
We are guided through life by moments, people, and feeling, but sometimes the ideas themselves have agendas all their own. Read Missing Letters by Jillian E. Nagel
A young boy and the far-more-worldly little girl next door work on mysteries without any clues until they find themselves trapped in a cellar with a “crazy man.” Read The Bear in the Mimosa Tree by Daniel Koehler
Robert Swereda is a member of the Filling Station collective in Calgary. He studied creative writing at Capilano University in Vancouver. Recent work has been published in In Air/Air Out, Steel Bananas, CV2, The Enpipe Line Anthology and Poetry Is Dead.
Tevin Xander is an anti-artist who believes art is merely a word to describe the metamorphosis of banality into captivation. Things in My House is a collection of digital paintings that aim to turn the overlooked into points of interest.
Longing for love, a lonely young man takes to the internet, offering himself and services to the streets of Toronto. You have some that are warm, some filled with understanding, and then you have Them Brian Clarke Nights
An unlikely alumnus of Montreal organised crime considers the path he must travel from violent past to family future, with a final act of chilling brutality separating one from the other. Read Holiday Gangster by Mike Staples
Adreyo Sen lives in Kolkata. Since the age of seven, he has been an inveterate scribbler of poems and stories, furiously decimating expensive notebooks with his thoughts. He did a first MA at the University of Leeds in Victorian Literature and a second one in Sociology at Columbia University, falling in love with Columbia and New York.
Governments lie to us while corporations poison us both physically and mentally. We are only warned about the dangers of products and services when it doesn’t impact the economy. Here are some warning labels that you won’t see anywhere else. Check out WARNINGS
The Felstone clan are a miserable bunch of failed individuals living on the fringe of society. When years of bitterness and regret burn inside you, can you find it in yourself to forgive the Felstone Stain? Read The Felstone Stain by Graeme Lottering
Never trust anyone over thirty? A middle-aged predatory therapist counsels young men to indulge their digital fantasies so he can steal their girlfriends and indulge his lust for young women. Read Your Girlfriend Does Not Love You by K. Ralph Bray
Mike Algera is a mid-twenty something approaching thirty, the lightning bug mentioned in passing at a fly by night artist’s lounge, a former Ontario scholar, Power of the Pen contest judge, McMaster graduate, advent reader, Blogger and Googler, co-editor and co-publisher of Word Salad, heavyweight performer at the Artword Artbar and champion dog walker.
Ryan Faulds
Nicole McInnis
William Nantz
Erik Rosdahl
Larry Bluman
Craig Kaempfer
Geoffrey Miller
Jeremiah Walton is 18, and lives in New England where he manages Nostrovia! Poetry, a small publishing press dedicated towards bringing poetry to the youth. Street art and the DIY method are a part of his idealistic relationship with poetry.
J. J. Steinfeld is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright who lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fourteen books. His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.
Featured Artist
Loren Kantor is a Los Angeles-based Woodcut Artist and writer. He worked in the film industry for 20 years as a screenwriter and assistant director. He is a huge fan of Classic Cinema and iconoclastic American Writers. He's been carving woodcut images for the past five years. He hopes that through his carving he can pay homage to the cultural ancestors and forerunners from our past.
Yeo Xin-Yi
Gabriel Evan Chew
Matthew French
Asma Abdi
When Debbie becomes convinced that pet-marriages are all the rage, she arranges to celebrate her devotion to her cockatoo in holy matrimony. Debbie’s friend and colleague observes as she jumps on board with the new trend: inter-species weddings. Read Cockatoo Wedding by Melissa McEwen
Trying to be what adults want you to be is hard. Learning the right thing to do is even harder. And unfortunately, syndicated TV doesn't provide the answers for teenagers navigating through the complicated high school world of sex, drugs and ESL classes. Read Magda by Jeff Dupuis
Available in June
Available in June
About Vegetarians:
The worst thing about vegetarians isn’t that they think they’re better than us omnivores, instead it’s how whenever they go out to eat they feel the need to ask whoever’s working if there’s any meat in the food they want ~even if they’re ordering plain white rice ~ then they announce to the waitress or cashier, everyone in their vicinity that “I’m a vegetarian.” It’s like they want praise and recognition, a round of applause and a reward for not eating meat. For being such a kind, caring, warmhearted, compassionate person.
Shannon Lyndsy
FLASH FICTION
Howie Good is less interested in telling what happened than in telling how what happened felt. His poems often have scenes, characters, and plot, but the relationship among these traditional components of narrative is frayed and strange. The poems proceed not by linear logic, but by the fractured logic of dreams, perhaps especially bad dreams.
