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Odd Lobster is open for submissions year-round. Send your work to oddlobsters@gmail.com.

Poetry

Please submit two poems in one document.

Non-fiction

Please submit one piece under 1500 words.

We welcome simultaneous submissions.

Contributors may submit once every three months.

We do not accept submissions with the aim of sexism, homophobia, transphobia.

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Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in Rattle, trampset, Variant Lit, The Chiron Review, Stone Circle Review, IceFloe Press, The Marrow Poetry, One Art Poetry, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English.

Founder and Editor
Kate Efimochkina is a writer and artist, born in Moscow, Russia. You can see her work in Stone Circle Review, Lamp Lit, The Turning Leaf Journal, among others.

Ahi | After Placement

After the fire, I built a cupboard—
too narrow for plates, deep enough
for letters.

The wood still gave.

Weeks later, heat rose
when the door shut—
ash lifting
to a rim that would not take it.

No one asked what burned.
I set a word down—
left it there.

It warped.
I scrubbed once.

The mark moved—
grain opening
around it.

The neighbours painted—
kākāriki.

I left mine
as it was—
still taking.

One hand set it—
then withdrew.

Breath clung to wood.
Nothing closed.

What survived
took weight.

The statue in the village square 

is alive.

No one believes me.
 Yet every morning the horse’s hoof is raised a little higher 
a little lower
stray hair on rider’s head displaced
stoic gaze more vacant
as if to cast a sneer of doubt 
upon these bold assertions.

 A bronze plaque speaks of founding works. Heroic, righteous deeds. 
Not why Jenny’s glove’s left hanging 
from the tip 
of a dew-slicked sword.

Millefiori

I quit smoking, started chewing coffee grounds
To win my way back into her good graces, though
California waits for no one, her sun beats on other shoulders 

I’ve been gone, been busy pairing up my thoughts
Nicely, teaching children sounds to make
Inventing paper flowers

Wondering if spring tastes the same
As when the future still pealed like a bell
And mussel shells thumb-wrestled 
God until the sun went blue. If it tastes

Like new carrots— spindly, earthy, and cold
Barley tea, a blind driveway’s kicked-up dust
The quiet sour of a young grape stem
Unwound around a scrap-metal trellis 

Campfire smoke, citronella, screwdriver, vomit
Superbloom, superbloom, superbloom

Masso delle fanciulle

We watch her undress before she slips smooth
as an eel under the surface.
She seems young.

My father’s sentence vanished. It’s another
of those things with no real conclusion.

Girls came to die here, letting themselves slip
from the boulder to the shallow waters.
They refused marriages.

Here are the men. 
All castigated by their same nature. 

Why we remember what we remember from
childhood is a mystery.

The girl resurfaces. She smiles: she knows
they watch her. 

My father’s sweat drop is a dark ring on the 
white stone. He looks for me, and there I am,
on the riverbank,

pulling stones and dry moss from my mouth, my 
hand always deeper as I retch, tears filling
as I whelp.  

I’m looking for ways 
to stay quiet lately and 
that’s something new to 

me. Usually 
I like loud. I move towards
explosions, towards 

the threat of something 
more raucousful than my head:
distractions, at least 

equilibrium. 
Not these days. These days I dream
of a vast silence. 

Not literally. 
Literally, I dream of 
my drains breaking. Full 

vessels awaiting 
my scoop, a bailing out or 
some sudden magic

which I often poss-
es in liminality.
Once awake, I’m sure 

there is meaning to
be found, lines to trace, pins to 
press. I search my day 

for night-semblances,
keep notes of clues some other
me-ish body has

placed with precision, 
a scavenger hunt of the 
psyche and I think 

this is normal. No-
thing to look too closely at. 
I’ve said that enough 

that I believe it. 
The sink and tub and other 
sink and shower are 

quiet. Maybe that’s 
how I know not to be scared
in the dreams. Nothing 

deadly is silent,
famously. And anyways, 
my antagonist 

can’t be obvious 
like that, can’t be commonplace; 
something out to get

me would have to be
less utilitarian,
more in love with me. 

Evening Star

There is no moon tonight. No city lurks
over bloodshot floodgates of this late horizon.

Mercurial fragments of the clouds revise
themselves, leaking on the lake. Songbirds look

like wild arrows spilling down the water.
Fireflies atomize. Scrolls of birch bark peel.

The bullfrogs’ choir fills the still black pools.  
A fish backflips—now circles ring out wider.

Each tree conjoins its shadow over pastures.
Come, lie out in the shivering, dew-wet fields.

The earth takes our impressions. Let us yield 
to its material of daily rapture…

The love-slow cerements of errant weather
bind us. Darkness marinates. Stars gather.

Not a Deer

Somewhere out there is a poem in its natural habitat,
a poem with fields to run through, and a sky as big
as a song above it. Somewhere there is a poem, slinking
between trees, dappled by light. I am not going to hunt
it down, but I will admire it from my perch in a poplar,
the glow of it, the steady munch of teeth. It is not
permeable by bow and arrow, or susceptible
to birdshot. It is a poem after all, right now it eats
grass, later sunlight, and the ominous buzz of  mosquitoes.