"Both couples arrived in my office with the same set of issues – same quibbles and mannerisms and strongly held beliefs about themselves and significant others. What else can I say to get my point across? They were the same people." www.godscrueljokelit.com/kauffman-cou...

"Her hands tighten around my neck and drag me out the door. She flings me against a wall. I pull my hair back to retch, then slide down beside a puddle of myself on the filthy concrete floor, watching the train depart with the woman I could love." godscrueljokelit.com/myer-l-shaped-cafe

New short story from Alex Osman tonight — read '...And The Award Goes To:' "Those were the unhappiest times of my life. I was adored, but there's such a vast difference between adoration and love, and I desperately wanted to be loved." www.godscrueljokelit.com/osman-and-th...

Review today from Hugh Blanton, covering Joshua Trent Brown's debut novel, 'The Walls Are Closing In On Us', about a man in the aftermath of his attempted lynching, recounting a life in the segregation-era South while suffering a heavy dose of hemotoxin. www.godscrueljokelit.com/h-blanton-ru...

We got some fresh bondage poetry tonight from Hayden Nox. Read 'Bound to Choose'. www.godscrueljokelit.com/h-nox-bound-...

Tyler Plofker's making a team. "We are a team. A crew. A collective. We go by many names: Sausages Delight AKA the Organization AKA the Many Hands of God (or sometimes God is replaced by Lucifer or sometimes replaced by Azrael) AKA the Department of Dudes." www.godscrueljokelit.com/t-plofker-the-

Though most of Joshua Martin's work tends to defy definition, it always manages to evoke a deep sense of unease in me. Today's feature is an unrelenting word barrage that shatters meaning through total sensual overload. www.godscrueljokelit.com/j-martin-re-...

Very short story today. Jake Tavares tells of a formative encounter with Rocco Siffredi. Read 'The Wet Spot'. www.godscrueljokelit.com/j-tavares-we...

"Pain does not exist without the obsession we have with pleasure. I look at you and I feel the promise of new sensation, of possibility and renewal. Your body is an object of the mind’s eye, of satisfaction of perpetual desire." godscrueljokelit.com/m-g-cooper-one-eyed-god

3 new poems today from Kristi Joy Rimbach "Regardless of my efforts, / my flesh is losing its grip, / loosening like an overused / elastic waistband. I scoop flesh / into "lifting" yoga pants, / wear shrugs over tank tops to hide / the droops and bulges" godscrueljokelit.com/rimbach-3-poems

"He thinks of the bell tower that used to crown the castle, the warning clanging it would crash across the fields, how there’s nothing in the monastery now that resembles a bell or its tower, just Father Mochan’s words saying what was once there." godscrueljokelit.com/c-bethea-exhuming-absence

Start your weekend off right with some new poems from henry 7. reneau, jr. "The people...as a theory / , has the heft of trebuchet stones lobbed into still water , and the collective conscience complicit / , rippling outwards—a- / mass in motion..." www.godscrueljokelit.com/henry-7-rene...

New story today from @nealauch.bsky.social where an audition turns sour. Read 'The Casting Couch'. "The sound grew louder. She could hear it echoing from behind the walls: tissues being rearranged, bladders filling and draining, fluids intermingling." www.godscrueljokelit.com/n-auch-casti...

Very special feature today from poet and artist Bill Wolak: The First Thrill of Abandon, The Sudden Enigma of Offered Nakedness & Midnight Spiders. www.godscrueljokelit.com/b-wolak-3-ph...

Phenomenal new story today from Hayli McClain. "Perhaps Queenie was simply shouldering a portion of her best friend’s woe and worry. Every woman’s struggle is inextricably linked, yet they each echo through their own unique well of loneliness." www.godscrueljokelit.com/mcclain-ever...

Rope Ritual (by @godscrueljokelp.bsky.social ) is also about reminiscing. But it's about finding a tree once used by some serial killer, and remembering that your serial killer obsession stemmed from your ex: www.godscrueljokelit.com/b-lebret-rop...

We're closing out March with some superb necrotic smut from @ristypula.bsky.social. Sink your teeth into Strawberry Preserves. www.godscrueljokelit.com/stypula-stra...

Posting news twice in one day? Couldn’t be me. But I have new words out now with @godscrueljokelp.bsky.social! If your life has been lacking (surprisingly sweet?) zombie erotica then check out “Strawberry Preserves” 💀❤️‍🔥🍓

"My intrinsically melancholic, sex-pot, subservient nature came out of the woodwork of a dacha surrounded by birch trees. Justification precedes violence. Violence is painless, it’s inevitable in the procurement of enlightenment." www.godscrueljokelit.com/zhichkin-2-p...

This is the beginning of Rope Ritual, my short story about finding a tree once used by some serial killer. It released today on @godscrueljokelp.bsky.social and you can read it here for free: www.godscrueljokelit.com/b-lebret-rop...

Choke on Rope Ritual from @evoripclaw.bsky.social "While it excites you, you resent Julie for her hesitation, for the kindness she expresses when she messes up. You'd like her to just breathe and smell of tobacco as she puts you into bondage." godscrueljokelit.com/b-lebret-rope-ritual

"Yesterday, he tells me, I was in the private quarters undressing my abscess for 22 minutes. The average shed time is 7 minutes and 46 seconds. He emphasizes that they do not want me to feel shame, they just want to make sure I’m using my time wisely." godscrueljokelit.com/m-j-hoarty-shedding

Two new stories today from Chris Clemens! "Waiting for our half-point fathers to wander home after work, we played dust hockey in the dim basement of our Chicago tenement building. Roaches scuttling away into the corners. Bandanas over our mouths." www.godscrueljokelit.com/chris-clemen...

I'm super happy to have another story published, this time in @godscrueljokelp.bsky.social . Also horror, it's called "Wants," and it's about what your presale home pest inspection might discover. www.godscrueljokelit.com/behm-steinbe...

Very short story today from Hugh Behm-Steinberg: 'Wants' "We saw its eye, and even though we knew it was impossible, we also knew that it was looking at us, right through the monitor. That it was awake, finally awake, and that it knew what we wanted." www.godscrueljokelit.com/behm-steinbe...

"It's not enough that we remember. It's that we remember in the correct way, without pain and without confusion." Dig Kurt Newton's latest contribution to GCJ: 'Redefine Life with Dimensia'. godscrueljokelit.com/kurt-newton-dimensia

"the hourglass with mocking locusts / brimming wild erotic time, / blooms the breasts of lovers / in moon dusk tomorrow. / sever tantric Venus from resurrection as / seahorses cut darkness / in maelstroms of / the melting child dawn." - Night Swimming godscrueljokelit.com/rj-butler-3-poems

Jenna McClain's Float is the new release by @godscrueljokelp.bsky.social and it's weirdly intimate and disturbingly desperate at the same time. Because the will to live can be twisted when the water keep rising and the whole world's disappearing. You can read it for free beneath the koi fish:

Today we have 'Float' from Jenna McClain! "I wonder if there’s anyone else in this city, in any city, also waiting for the rate of structural collapse to decide when it’s their time to go. Perhaps we’re especially lucky." www.godscrueljokelit.com/j-mcclain-fl...

Really good really short story today from Sarah Zell: 'Look at Me' "The Earth is hell. The evil piles within me, building around my organs like sludge. I have to be vigilant: it might have sneaked into the assembly of my baby’s flesh." www.godscrueljokelit.com/sarah-zell-l...

"Clicking in and out of different pages, he scrolled through hundreds of pictures, photographic evidence attesting to the depth of the problem, hundreds of different faces distorted almost out of all human recognition." - Mirror, Mirror by Neil Randall www.godscrueljokelit.com/neil-randall...

Ken Anderson has returned to GCJ with a pair of heavy hitters. “They’re hard / to love,” a universal nighthawk broods, / his brown wings folded, faded, tucked. He doesn’t understand / just how he wound up here— his coffee bitter / as his sharp despair. godscrueljokelit.com/ken-anderson-2-poems

Spend your evening with Camden Hunt. "anyway. in the early part of the twentieth century this guy fucks a chimp. he contracts hiv. he fucks more people. they contract hiv. his hiv becomes aids. he dies. everyone he fucked fucks more people." godscrueljokelit.com/camden-hunt-monologue

"Somehow, there was 2%. We didn’t know what we had done to deserve it or if we had even done anything at all and there was no accounting for it and we said as much to the journalist. We said it was shameful and embarrassing." - 2% by David C. Porter www.godscrueljokelit.com/david-c-port...

We're kicking off the year right with a great review of Joe West's 'Tears Into Wine' from Hugh Blanton: 'Booky Books'. www.godscrueljokelit.com/booky-books-... Tears Into Wine is well worth the read, the novel is a trip to say the very least: www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKX7N43F

"So on I went, making a hole through designer-wrapped gifts as I low-crawled. On the other side I met a curious cat sitting upright, her head cocked sideways, lightly boxing at a tinsel-tangled bough my motion had jiggled." godscrueljokelit.com/geier-bass-line

Alan Crowther continues this month's long story trend with a dense literary nasty: Pig Dog "Not merely disgusting, I felt condemned and all shapes of fears and anxieties germinated inside of me, the most agonising of which was that I would die a virgin." godscrueljokelit.com/crowther-pig-dog

Read 'Nothing?' by @ewenglass.bsky.social This time with a link that actually works: www.godscrueljokelit.com/ewen-glass-n...

New poem from @ewenglass.bsky.social ! "Morning, afternoon, evening nothing, / nothing in details, nothing in pose or / great big lamentations on the internet / and rending of garments in T.J.Maxx, / nothing responses all to the tremendous / all of nothing." godscrueljoke.com/ewen-glass-nothing

Ben Allee's Guest Complex is a long slow burn oozing with dread. "At one point in this blurry cycle, I try to leave the apartment. I can’t. Like with grocery shopping, I put the keys in my pocket and go to leave and feel like I’ve left but I haven’t." godscrueljokelit.com/allee-guest-complex

In case you missed it the other day, a poem. I really like it, and you might like it too (if you're a freak like me). 🫀

My second ever poetry publication is out today from my dearly beloved God's Cruel Joke if you want something to chew on today that might just chew you back.

Chewy new poem today from @probablyharmless.bsky.social! "If my form / Were as massive as my hunger / And my mouth as colossal as my want / I would crush your beautiful body / Upon the thirty-two jagged peaks that line my jaws" godscrueljokelit.com/theodore-hill-more-famished

Fresh weirdness from Jacob Austin today "His disgust bumps into another breed of thought up in the tangled wires of his mind. Maybe they want to use my seed to impregnate their own women. To bolster their stock. Could use some of my genetic material." godscrueljokelit.com/j-austin-officer-ogen

"I have never felt the love one is inscribed with having to feel. I think movies have ruined that prospect for most. The Lady In The Tramp style of love. The type where if you don’t offer me any of your food, I’ll think something is wrong with this love." www.godscrueljokelit.com/franceschi-3...

5 new poems today from Rus Khomutoff's forthcoming chapbook, Kaos Karma www.godscrueljokelit.com/khomutoff-po...

"For the eight quiet and progressive years that Hog Hollow had been in operation, Darrel had been instructing the herd in simple English. The pigs caught on quickly and were soon able to recognize many verbal and written commands." www.godscrueljokelit.com/seefahrt-the...

"What we’re talking here like to come from a Mary Poppins portmanteau: Romantasy! Bodice-rippers with pixie dust! And this john-ray’s got it all: Werewolf- and vampire-adjacent princesses languishing in Tudorbethan castles from structural gaslighting" www.godscrueljokelit.com/peter-geier-...