Bottlecap Press (2024)

20/08/2024

Courtney Bambrick's chapbook, World Without, is available from Bottlecap Press!

World Without asks readers to consider their relationships to the things that make our reality real. This collection suggests a series of alternative realities, each of which might test our ability to accept change. The worlds without hands, mirrors, museums, doctors, etc. presented in these short poems are strange, but also familiar. In each scenario, we consider the small and significant things that make our world familiar—and the deletions that make it unfamiliar.

Courtney Bambrick was poetry editor at Philadelphia Stories 2010-2024. She teaches writing at Thomas Jefferson University’s East Falls campus in Philadelphia. Her own poems appear in Landlocked Magazine, Pinhole Poetry, Thimble, SWWIM Everyday, New York Quarterly, Invisible City, and more.

19/08/2024

Pierre Minar's chapbook, Transmissions from My Yearning Chair, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Pierre Minar’s new collection of poems is about weather, God’s presence, clavicles, and how an organized fridge might save your marriage.

Can a divine presence reveal itself in a captcha prompt? Did you bring an offering of peanuts to the cemetery angel? These poems explore loneliness, memory, identity, regret, and desire in our weird world.

We don’t build Hagia Sophias, we build Alamodomes and then abandon them. But don’t despair, there’s beauty and divinity everywhere, even in the satisfying click of a Costco Pyrex lid.

Pierre Minar is a poet and bureaucrat who writes and makes short films about funnels and gummy bears. He was born in Beirut and lives in Dallas. When not writing, Pierre spends time helping raise a small child, watering plants (non-succulent), and investigating allegations of Medicare fraud by hospitals and biotech companies.

16/08/2024

From Masin Persina's chapbook, Centonials, available from Bottlecap Press!

The poems in Centonials are made from New York Times articles published one hundred years, to the day, prior to their own composition. These poems want to time travel, taking note of what musical artists, such as Boards of Canada, accomplish, which is to find a very specific emotion from the past. As poems lack vintage synthesizers (unfortunately) these Centonials use the language of old news articles as their material.

Surreal, empathetic, wondrous, the poems in Centonials speak to our current moment’s absurdities by using the language of the past to bring to light again the names, ghosts and emotions long buried beneath the mountains of public record.

Masin Persina lives in Richmond, CA with his wife and daughter and their senior dog. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in places such as Sixth Finch, Ninth Letter, Ugly Duckling Presse, The Journal, Boulevard, and elsewhere. He received the Lucille Clifton Scholarship through the Community of Writers and is a graduate of UC Davis MFA program. He currently teaches new teachers how to teach in the Humanities in the East Bay.

14/08/2024

Sophia Noulas' chapbook, Pip Culture, is available from Bottlecap Press!

The prose poems herein are maps of mistakes we may face doing our best to get in our own way.

To experience Pip Culture is to bite into a fruit, only for the seeds to burst against your teeth. A bitter, unpleasant, and universal experience... only for us to keep eating? Most disappointments stem from misunderstandings learned when we are young, and growing up can warp into unlearning bad habits like entertaining hopes, having expectations, and believing stories overheard at the bar.

It is both nothing that you have been promised, yet everything you would expect.

Sophia Noulas (she/her/yours) is a Greek American writer who sleeps in Brooklyn. Pip Culture is her debut collection, featuring work previously published in Passengers Journal, High Shelf Press, No Contact Mag, and elsewhere. If you see her wandering around at 2 am, Please hand her a Cup o’Noodles or some Halal Guys. Follow her on Instagram

14/08/2024

Britt Coffman's chapbook, The King's Beavers, is available from Bottlecap Press!

This collection begins with a recipe and ends with a shopping list. It's days spent dreaming while I'm awake - seeing a moth attached to a kite when I miss the train or a badger where there is really a finance bro scowling over a flat white. I see a city in terms of nuts, berries and cracked lips.

But you're wondering where the beavers are and why they belong to the monarchy. I guess I wanted to beg the question through these poems: is to be king to be truly alive? Or does turning a puddle shot with prism into melted rainbow butter make me a poet? Remember, these are dreams.

To make sense of them is to destroy their fun.

Britt Coffman is a 24 year old q***r poet and fiction writer based in New York. Her work has been published in a few literary journals such as Reliquiae Journal and Menacing Hedge. Coffman's piece "No I" received the Pratt Institute’s BFA Thesis Prize in 2022 and her first poetry collection, Chronicle Psychiatrist Telephone, is available now.You can follow her on instagram

12/08/2024

Emma Claire Fellows' chapbook, Bird Girl, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Bird Girl is a collection of poems from Emma Claire Fellows’s manuscript in progress. The chapbook treads themes of embodied and inherited ancestral memory. Fellows is an architect and preservationist of familial mythos. Fellows utilizes ornithological observations and juxtapositions throughout each poem.

Fellows is interested in the act of witnessing and testifying through the construction and faulty lens of memory. Her poems take form in prose, traditional, and experimental shape as she transverses the fickle land of time. The works of Ilya Kaminsky, Yerra Sugarman, and Rebecca Solnit have served as launching pads for inspiration at various points of Fellows’s writing process.

Emma Claire Fellows is a Brooklyn-based poet who was born and raised in the Metro-Detroit area. She is an amateur birder and believes in ghosts. Emma holds an MFA in Poetry from the New School.

12/08/2024

cm ellis' chapbook, Yellow Rose Effigy, is available from Bottlecap Press!

In Yellow Rose Effigy, cm ellis’ debut chapbook, grief waltzes to the same song as seduction, sticking to the speaker’s heels. Until it picks them up and swings them dizzy. Until they flint, setting fire to all the speaker’s certainties as easily as dry flowers.

In this collection sorrow does not let the speaker go to breathe for a moment. The dance is disorienting and infuriating in turn. Is the speaker smiling or grimacing? Singing or crying?

Yellow Rose Effigy is a release and an offering of what was made in the dark and burned for light.

cm ellis (Michael C.) is the fiction editor for Ghost City Review and lives in Texas. Their affair with writing has been wildly inappropriate and deeply embarrassing for all involved. They also really like pistachios. If you’re lookin you can find them on the Poems & Whiskey Podcast (it’s in all the places, pretty sure) where they just. keep. talking.
born

10/08/2024

Sunayna Pal's chapbook, Please Go to the Park, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Step into a world where nature’s whispers become your guide, where every blade of grass, every petal, and every trail speaks a language of peace and reflection. Please Go to the Park is a collection of poems and illustrations that explore the tranquility and beauty of nature, particularly within the confines of a park.

Sunayna Pal takes inspiration from the everyday signs we encounter in parks—with titles like "Please Don’t Walk on the Grass", "Please Stay on the Trail" and "No Swimming". Each poem reimagines these directives, transforming them into meditative reflections on the freedom and joy of experiencing nature.

Through vivid imagery and heartfelt verses, the poet captures the essence of nature’s gentle guidance. Whether it’s the glistening grass tickling your sole or immersing yourself in a symphony of crickets, each poem offers a moment of respite and reflection amidst the busyness of life. They invite you to lie down, breathe deeply, and release the burdens that weigh you down.

Sunayna Pal's poetry graces the pages of numerous international journals, anthologies, museums, poetry festivals, and libraries, resonating with readers across the globe. Her debut book, Refugees in Their Own Country (B&W Fountain), tells the Partition of India in verse and illustrations. Beyond her writing, Sunayna serves as the Director of The Poetry Academy and is dedicated to Heartfulness meditation. For a deeper insight into her work and journey, please visit sunaynapal.com. She stays in Maryland with her family.

10/08/2024

Jason Gabbert's chapbook, From Valentine, is available from Bottlecap Press!

From Valentine is a series of epistolary poems-as-collage exploring the narrative of a being concurrently existing as human and celestial body communicating to a narcissistic mother, Pluto, and a bottle. From Valentine navigates topics ranging from parent-child relationships, transparency, light, color, longing, identity, fear, escape, the traps of answering questions that sometimes carry no answers, and existing in space.

This work came to being as a project of discovery wherein a few poems given the same title ("From Valentine") juxtaposed themselves and posed several questions (who is Valentine? What is Valentine? Who is Valentine speaking to?) begging to be revealed further through the act of writing. Though no perfect answer is given, an experience is exposed for each reader to explore and relate to individually.

Jason Gabbert graduated from PNCA with an MFA in creative writing. He writes prose, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, concrete, abstract, viscous, translucent, fog, and almost always ocean. Jason’s relationship with his writing is similar to that of his dreams: the many scenes and beings that present themselves often feel out of his control and open to endlessly evolving creative interpretations. Because of this, Jason’s words lean toward fragmentary exploration filled with symbolism and speculation. At the core of his practice is a writhing movement toward empathy and a desire to understand himself and the world he is a part of. Jason lives with his wife and three children in Portland, Oregon.

09/08/2024

Fatima Ijaz's chapbook, Last of the Letters, is available from Bottlecap Press!

The chapbook Last of the Letters questions the reality of what marks an end to an ongoing conversation between two people. In a series of 16 unsent, unanswered letters it asks whether the end is really the end. If closure comes with just breaking off physical contact, then these letters are wayward, pointless. However, in a scenario where there is no emotional closure, but the physical realm has been sealed off, where do the residue conversations go? The unsaid, the undeclared, that which was held back – how do all these conversations simmer inside someone?

These letters are then a distant conversation that is still taking place in the universe somewhere. They carry the belief that perhaps there still might be a possible meeting point! They hold the sensation of losing someone midway – when all that could be said, was not said. Thus, these letters acquire an after-life and hover on the horizon as question-marks. They are rendered in poetic prose first, and then in free verse poetry to mirror the attempt to hold on to reality which nevertheless disintegrates into an undying emotional whirlpool. Last of all, these are good bye letters and intuit a release and a letting go. There comes a time when this becomes not just easy but necessary, absolute.
ijaz6

09/08/2024

Katherine D. Perry's chapbook, Smaller Versions, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Dylan Thomas says, the “green fuse drives the flower,” and the poems in Katherine D. Perry’s Smaller Versions explore some of the experiences of adolescents, of the “green ages” of girls, growing up in the American South. The free verse, imagistic writing paints scenes of world events from the Vietnam War to the Covid-19 lock downs, revealing the struggles of everyday people trying to survive in a world structured to maintain hierarchies and the status quo. The poems sift through many of the damages and triumphs that those collisions in life leave us with. While this group of poems is not formally narrative, together they seem to offer a series of feminist voices that imagine what their lives might be like if we could love and live differently, if we didn’t require everyone to lose individuality to find love and belonging.

Like Perry’s first collection, Long Alabama Summer, the Gulf Coast becomes both a character and a backdrop for coming-of-age portraits, asking readers to rethink the idea that childhood is an age of innocence. Smaller Versions considers the smaller things in life against mammoth backdrops: daffodils in winter, ci******es at sunrise, or steamed shrimp after a hurricane. How, the writer seems to ask us, do small creatures matter when we consider the size of the universe? What beauty follows from catastrophe?

Katherine D. Perry is a Professor of English at Perimeter College of Georgia State University where she teaches writing and American Literature. Her first book of poetry, Long Alabama Summer, was released in December of 2017. Some of her recent poems have been published in journals such as InScribe Journal, Last Leaves, Fresh Words, The Coop, and Writers Resist. She is also a co-founder of the Georgia State University Prison Education Project, which brings college courses to incarcerated students in Georgia prisons. She lives in Decatur, Georgia with her spouse and two children and identifies as a Southern writer, even though she thinks that labels are complicated. Her website is www.katherinedperry.com.

07/08/2024

Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera's chapbook, STORIES ALL OUR OWN, is available from Bottlecap Press!

STORIES ALL OUR OWN captures the dreams and desires of five cousins who are all the same age every summer. They spend their weekends, vacations, holidays and special occasions gathered in each other’s homes that are scattered across the Southwest: Blythe, Yuma, El Centro, San Diego, and Riverside. They wish and splash and scratch together. They sneak out of the house and cause travesuras when their adults aren’t looking.

It is a tribute to the joys of childhood in an era when doors weren’t locked and kids played outside until the streetlights came on or the bugs came out or the moon wasn’t bright enough to guide the way home.

The collective voice captures the way these girls defy gendered expectations and how they see the world with unfiltered exuberance. Their journey exposes the societal forces that attempt to destroy their innocence. We watch them grow.

Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and a PhD at The University of Southern California. Her short stories have been anthologized in Rural Writers of Color, Made in L.A. Volume 4 & 5, Ramblings & Reflections: SouthWest Writers Winning Words Anthology, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers’ Workshop Festival and her one-act play “Temporary Arrangement” was featured in the Latinx group of the Short + Sweet Festival Hollywood. Her fiction has been nominated for Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and spotlighted in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her YA novel, Breaking Pattern, is available from Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit.

06/08/2024

Paige Cripps' chapbook, Fallen Angels and Other Rotten Things, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Fallen Angels and Other Rotten Things is an interweaving of childhood, girlhood, womanhood and the horrors that persist throughout. Just as a butterfly must spread its wings, so too must the little girl. The collection features three respective sections, journeying through the becoming of woman and what it means to be a butterfly in a world full of mosquitoes. Escaping the shackles of conformity in the pursuit of identity, navigating through heartbreak and loss, and re-discovering love for oneself are explored in Fallen Angels and Other Rotten Things.

Not only does the collection cater to young girls and women, but to those who feel out of place in the fast-paced world we currently inhabit. Fallen Angels is for the broken and misunderstood who still hold out hope for love and happiness in such a cruel world. Within its pages there is experience inside the cocoon, flying with newfound wings, or scars where wings should be. Regardless the stage of metamorphosis, there is always room for returning to the soil we once inhabited and making ourselves a more hospitable home to grow within. Fallen Angels and Other Rotten Things encourages us to return to our wounds and rewrite the narrative surrounding them.
cripps

06/08/2024

Shawn McCann's chapboon, Indigena California, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Indigena California is Shawn McCann’s debut chapbook. It is a short collection of poems that journey into the minds of California’s plant life, and a few creatures that live among them, to peel back the veil and give them the words to express their inner most spirits. Each poem/narrative letter gives you their emotional depth, their individual perspective on creation itself, and their assessment of you. They show how some are just enjoying life, some are bitter about the ups and downs of sunshine, and some are our oldest defenders who would gladly give up their lives, but mostly, they are alone.

Can you imagine, for a second, being chained to the ground, unable to move, completely reliant on the earth around you, and utterly ignored? What if our greatest allies are forlorn? What if they are screaming to be noticed by their one true love, us? Through the lens of despondency mixed with a thimble of faith, Shawn McCann introduces us to the rolling hills of Northern and Central California, the coastal cliffs of the Bay Area, the mountain peaks of the Sierras, the deselect Mojave, and the local Southern gardens. Come see what our beautiful companions in this lonely world have to say.

Shawn McCann is a writer, husband, stay-at-home dad, and a disabled combat veteran who served four tours in Iraq with the U.S. Army. His stories and poems attempt to show a little light and humor in all the dark he has seen. You can find his work in the N**e Bruce Review, The Raven Review, The Turning Leaf Journal, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Abandon Journal with more on the way.

05/08/2024

Nico Demers' chapbook, Wing, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Demers' collection is thematically weaved together by one of his family's traditions, hunting. Although Demers is not much of a hunter himself, he developed an intimate relationship with nature having been raised by a father who was steeped in the practice of living off the land. Wing outlines this rugged lineage to confront generational wounds of manhood and Demers’ tumultuous relationship with his father. The poetry survives in the wilderness and feeds off the land, often encountering the haunting images of birds, the mythical beauty of deer, and what it means to hunt and become the hunted.

The wild essence of Wing celebrates one’s nuanced connection to life and death, it shines on the small magic of existence, and provides a sense of gratitude and hope for what lies in front of us and beyond the hills. In all the chaos, Wing points to one truth, that life is “a feathered, beastly impermanence.”

Nico Demers is a writer born and raised in San Diego, CA. He is a first-generation American of Mexican and French-Canadian descent. Donning a raccoon cap and his typewriter, Demers’ work started gaining traction online three years ago under the moniker “Bucknife”. Since then, he has been recognized in various magazines including The Daily Aztec, Rambl Mag, The Pace Press, and Vroom Literary Magazine. In 2022 Demers self-published two chapbooks, Guts and Crow, and in 2023 released his first full-length collection, Belly. While his early work tangibly reflected the beatnik movement, his untethered spirit has taken shape in a style that is distinctly his own. In 2024, he received his degree in English Literature with an emphasis on creative writing from San Diego State University. When not writing, Demers splits his time between surfing and running his Janitorial company.

01/08/2024

Ken LéMarchand's chapbook, Black Liquorice on Ice, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Black Licorice On The Rocks is a poetry collection with a bite. Like its namesake drink, these poems offer a bracing exploration of life's realities, both sweet and sour. Dive into heartbreak, loss, and self-discovery with a touch of whimsy, celebrating resilience along the way.

Fresh metaphors and pop-culture winks challenge your perspective, revealing beauty in the overlooked. Whether it's a blossoming love or a darkly funny heartbreak, Black Licorice On The Rocks leaves a unique aftertaste that lingers.

Ken LéMarchand is a published writer and poet based in Maine, USA. His work has appeared in literary publications such as The Winged Moon Magazine, The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, and Gypsophila Zine. LéMarchand's debut poetry collection, Stained Love Like Egyptian Cotton, is available on Amazon.com. He holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing & English, graduating cm laude from Southern New Hampshire University. Currently, LéMarchand is a blogging entrepreneur who combines his poetic voice with online content creation through his platform, Wandering Metaphors, which offers insightful writing on Substack and podcast episodes on Spotify.

01/08/2024

Daria Deptula's new chapbook, Wire Rings, is available from Bottlecap Press!

Wire Rings is Daria Deptula’s debut poetry chapbook. In twelve abstract prose poems, this collection explores the onset of anticipatory grief and the idea that love is not enough. It uses the non sequitur and the nonsensical to illustrate the creeping dread of saying goodbye to someone not yet gone and the lingering presence of someone long gone.

In metaphor that juxtaposes imagery of the natural world and the mundane, this collection examines how it feels to reminisce and yearn all at once. Poems such as “The Wretched” and “Inclement Weather Evacuation” draw upon the nostalgia of forgotten love, while those including “Fiberglass Heart” and “Untitled (Late Spring)” consider foretelling the end of love. Wire Rings seeks to explore the many ways that love can be lost.

Daria Deptula is an author and early childhood educator. They hold a B.A. in History and an undergraduate certificate in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at Austin. They published several short stories before the release of their debut novel, Solastella, in late 2020 from Thurston Howl Press. Wire Rings is their first poetry collection. When they’re not reading or writing, Daria enjoys creating mixed-media collages, playing the piano and mandolin, and spending time in nature. They live in Austin, Texas.

31/07/2024

Jeanie Tomasko's chapbook, The Beginning of the Account of the Reading Fox in the Night, is available from Bottlecap Press!

The probability of a fox reading in the night is zero, the fox said, but that is different than possibility. The possibility of The Beginning of the Account of the Reading Fox in the Night taking you to a place you’ve only imagined is very likely. Interspersed with philosophy, this unique train of thought is a journey worth embarking on. Simple as a glass of water in the middle of the night, inviting as a dear friend reading a story.

A poetic prose fairy tale meditation on time and trains and magical friendships, these are questions you’ve probably not often considered: Why not climb onto the lap of a soft reading fox? Why not take a train that is whizzing through the night? Why not consider a whole new way of seeing?

Don’t forget your carry-on, the moon says.

Jeanie Tomasko is a writer and artist, a retired nurse, a garlic farmer and has, after many years, baked the perfect chocolate chip cookie. When not being visited by imaginary foxes, she can often be found throwing balls to her dog. She has published a few chapbooks and enjoys collaborating with other artists. She and her husband divide their time between Southern Wisconsin and a cabin in Northern Wisconsin in a county with no stoplights.

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