Doom Pussy

Short story “Pussy Bomb/Earthquakes Bring Confusion” published in X-Peri

An online literary journal for extreme experimentalism, X-Peri publishes new work every Monday. Today, my science fiction story “Pussy Bomb/Earthquakes Bring Confusion” appeared on the site, with an accompanying still image from my video “Succubus Highway.” You can check it out here.

This text is part of a series of pieces featuring Doom Pussy, a kind of Kali-esque figure engaged in a war against war…as well as gender, environmental destruction, and other by products of human activity. An editor at another journal once described a Doom Pussy story as “a cross between William S. Burroughs and Andrea Dworkin.” This should come with an NSFW warning for extremely graphic language and situations. So I’m especially grateful to X-Peri for publishing it.

“Pussy Pulls the Trigger” published in Danse Macabre

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Online literary journal Danse Macabre, “a magazine of the imaginative, the magical, the ethereal, the supernatural, the dark, the absurd, and  the unknown,” released Issue 119 “Les Etrennes” today. The works of the authors you see above are joined by one of my Doom Pussy stories. A violent rant from a Kali-like figure at war with mankind, “Pussy Pulls the Trigger” should come with one of those NSFW warnings, as it is intended only for a mature audience with strong constitutions and a taste for extreme, transgressive literature. Anyway, you can read the full text here.

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Short story “Pussy on the Mark” published at Scum Gentry

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One of my short stories featuring the Doom Pussy appeared yesterday in online in outlaw literary journal The Scum Gentry. Upon accepting it, the editor remarked on its “strong Burroughsean flavor and blatantly trangressive and demented tone,” which I thought nailed it pretty well. He summarized it this way: “Pussy, Doom and Smash lay waste to their world in this experimental psychosexual sci-fi riff.” Needless to say, this involves strong language that is NSFW and for mature audiences only. Read at your own risk here.

pussy mark story

“Beneath Collapse” published in Soft Cartel

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Yesterday, my poem “Beneath Collapse” appeared in online literary journal Soft Cartel. Subtitled “earthquake scenes 1999,” this ten-part piece came out of preparatory work for the Doom Pussy stories, where earthquakes are used as a weapon. I was reading newspaper reports of earthquakes and began cutting and slicing them, drawing out the most vivid and intense images to highlight the violent destruction and human drama. You can read the full poem here.

“A Spell Through Time” published in Midnight Lane Boutique

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Today online literary journal Midnight Lane Boutique published my poem “A Spell Through Time.” This piece is one of the texts from the Doom Pussy series, intended as a kind of incantation from the character herself. In the stories, Doom Pussy is a Kali-esque figure engaged in a total war against a destructive enemy: mankind as a virus.

Be aware that this piece features extreme language.

You can read it here.

There’s also a link to the Doom Pussy story published in Gobbet.

New story published in Horror Sleaze Trash

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Horror Sleaze Trash is an online literary journal of extremes–poetry and fiction from the edge, along with Suicide Girl photos, films and similarly sleazy trash. Yesterday evening, the journal published my story “Pussy Marches On,” another text in a cycle revolving around the character Doom Pussy, a Kali-like figure engaged in a war with mankind. There should probably some kind of hazard warning with it, due to the extreme language and situations, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, best to avoid. Otherwise, you can read it here.

Short story “Pussy War Theory” published in Gobbet magazine

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An online literary magazine for “experimental word stuffs,” Gobbet released my short story “Pussy War Theory” today. Part of a series of texts featuring the character Doom Pussy, it describes a Kali-like Earth goddess figure engaged in a constant war against the minions of a material death culture. This is the first of those pieces to be published since the 1990s.

Important note: There should probably be some kind of hazard warning on this story, due to extreme language, sexual situations, and the misuse of avant garde techniques. Needless to say, it is intended for mature audiences only.

If all this nonsense hasn’t scared you off, you can read “Pussy War Theory” here.

Supplementary note: Gobbet editor Gary J. Shipley wrote that the piece was “abject, lean and oddly precise: a winning combination.” I’m not sure what that means exactly, but the Doom Pussy stories reflect my long study of Artaud, Bataille, and Burroughs. Possibly as a reflection of the tale’s over-the-top intensity, harsh noise band Macronympha “borrowed” segments of one previously published story for titles and liner notes on a 7″ release. You can read my article about that record here.

Famous Noise Band Steals One of My Stories

In 2007, well-known harsh noise group Macronympha released a 7″ single on the Hospital Productions record label, called “Sex and Death.” There are two tracks, “Pussy Is My Soul” and “The Doom Pussy (Is Coming).” Both titles were taken from my story “Jaws of the Doom Pussy,” which was published in Malefact magazine, issue #4, back in 1997. The record includes an insert that has selections from the story cut out and pasted back together.

Just about everything in that paragraph is so obscure it requires a footnote, so allow me to explain.

I discovered the existence of this record last night while listening to a private press LP by one of my favorite “noise” artists, Runzelstirn and Gurglestock. While the demented piano playing and raucous cries spilled from the speakers, I decided to check the band’s discography on Discogs.com. Each time I added an R&G release to my wantlist, a line of “recommendations” appeared at the bottom of the screen. One of these was the Macronympha single, bearing intriguingly disturbing cover art. I clicked in to the release page for a closer look; there I saw the track listing. How could someone else come up with a line like “The Doom Pussy is Coming”? It was too close to my own work to be a coincidence.

Under “More Images, every part of the record is documented: front and back covers, record label, and two inserts. The final two pictures show an insert filled with solid blocks of words.On closer inspection, I recognized the text instantly. One of the musicians had collaged elements of the story from Malefact, creating a variation on the original. In fact, all the images on the jacket art could serve as illustrations for the narrative.

Macronympha has a long discography, having been active since the early 1990s, and is well-known in the harsh noise scene. This particular recording features original members Joe Roemer and Rodger Stella joined by Hospital Productions label boss Dominick Fernow . Fernow himself is a huge presence in the noise underworld, recording power electronics as Prurient and black metal as Vatican Shadow. I once saw Prurient on a bill with Wolf Eyes and Whitehouse. It was a great night for intense music and bleeding ears.

Given what I know of Fernow’s aesthetic interests (and those of Macronympha’s other members, as well), it makes sense the Doom Pussy story would have resonated with them, and that they would have seen Malefact. One of the best fanzines ever to come out of the Washington, DC, area, it mostly featured extreme, transgressive art with psychosexual, satanic, and psychedelic themes, often beautifully drawn by its editor, Tom Crites. Crites was also a huge fan of extreme music, including noise and black metal, and I can imagine he made contacts in those scenes. After I discovered Malefact, I wrote a short piece about it for The Washington City Paper (“Bureau of Smut,” 2/14/97); that’s when I met Tom and his domestic and publishing partner Sandy Smiroldo. Tom graciously allowed me to publish some of his graphics in my own fanzine, Mole. (Digression: I notice I spelled “Cthulhu” incorrectly in the article, and the WCP editors didn’t correct it!)

In The Headpress Guide to the Counterculture (2004, Manchester, UK), David Kerekes said this about Malefact 3 & 4: “One of the more pleasing art showcases, Malefact is a kind of Raw for the terminally apocalyptic. Running down the list of contributors ought to give clear indication of the type of subject matter on offer here: Miguel Angel Martin, Mike Diana, Nick Bougas, Trevor Brown, Sverre Kristensen, to name but a few. And if it still isn’t clear, how about serial killers on the job, huge ejaculating schlongs, and torture? Some of it is in comic strip, some of it big and bulbous full-page splashes. The artists in No. 4 have an even greater obsession with cartoon shit cakes.” (For the record, there is no reference to defecation in “Jaws of the Doom Pussy.”)

Somewhere along the line, I told  Tom and Sandy about the series of texts I had been working on featuring the Doom Pussy, a kind of warrior goddess at war with mankind; her weapons of choice were earthquakes triggered by bombs from a helicopter. They agreed the words would fit in well with the images in the zine. The stories are characterized by extreme sexuality, violence, magical practice, a performative writing style, and experimental techniques and structures. Easily the most intense writing I’ve produced, these texts have so far only seen light of day three times, all in long-defunct DC-based publications: two in a literary journal called Spoonfed, and once in Malefact. At the moment, I’m editing an anthology of all 19 Doom Pussy stories, potentially to be published later this year. It’s 275 pages of dense, eye-watering writing.

It seems appropriate that Macronympha would attach my words to their music and imagery. I don’t have a problem with it at all. It’s really a badge of honor. I just wish they had given me credit and sent me a copy of the record.