Sam Rasnake

22 11, 2025

Flyer Taped to a Store Window…

The Editor2026-06-08T20:58:51-04:00November 22, 2025|

by Sam Rasnake

 

If you know or see this person, please tell them: come home

One eye, oversized, heavy-lidded, as in
a Picasso—the other, a lit eye peeping
through the keyhole—one arm a cartoon,
one leg photoshopped from websites,

the other leg and arm from two Fellini
films—computers for fingers, flatscreens
for feet, with books for toes, paintings
for ears, a nose that’s a chimney—

the mouth is a cavern with rock formations,
trails, and stream—the lips an eel—the chin
a block of granite chiseled to fit—the face

an atlas, the hair a forest, the torso stolen,
the sex and hips are an unknown, the brain
a bowl of noodles, the heart is the heart

 

 

 

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Sam Rasnake’s works have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best Small Fictions, Best of the Web, Southern Poetry Anthology, Bending Genres Anthology, and MiPOesias Companion. He’s the author of three chapbooks and four poetry collections—most recently, Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit, 2023) and Fallen Leaves (Ballerini Book Press, forthcoming). Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social.

21 01, 2024

Reading the Leaves in My Palm,
I Casually Look Out the Window,
Waiting for the Other Shoe

The Editor2026-06-10T20:47:24-04:00January 21, 2024|

by Sam Rasnake

“no thing, not any thing, not something,” Middle English, from Old English naþing, naðinc, from nan ‘not one’ (see none) + þing ‘thing’ (see thing). Meaning “insignificant thing” – Online Etymology“no thing, not any thing, not something,” Middle English, from Old English naþing, naðinc, from nan ‘not one’ (see none) + þing ‘thing’ (see thing). Meaning “insignificant thing”  – Online Etymology

 

Nothing happens No gains, no real setbacks
if you don’t count the sinus infection or cracked
tooth, but other than that, same as it ever was, or
so said David Byrne, and he was right The outer

reaches of there continue to slip away until one day
– not any day soon though – in the universal sense,
we’ll crash into Andromeda – another film for
Cronenberg if he’s still working then and all that

implies, since I’m sure he’s working even when he’s
not – we can’t see everything – but the crash will be
most unsettling to us and to Andromeda’s parents
who once again, because of beauty, will not be able

to withstand the destruction – but, in the meantime,
nothing happens, which certainly is something –
nothing but the slow crawl of what we say is living
and, of course, what we say is never what we mean

 

 

 

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Sam Rasnake has published work in Wigleaf, The Drunken Boat, MiPOesias Companion, Southern Poetry Anthology, Bending Genres Anthology, and A Cluster of Lights. He has served as a judge for the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, University of California, Berkeley and is the author of Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press), and World within the World (Cyberwit).