Chaos & Kismet
the underbelly of poetry, essay and fiction - read for a kick in the chest or a kiss on the lips. OR if you're lucky — both.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 7
- Latest publication
- Sep 21, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 12, 2026
Latest issues
Perhaps skin struggling to hang onto bone. Misshapen boobs. Holes where no holes should be. (opens the original)
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Chaos & Kismet is moving to Patreon soon. More info below.I’ll call her Frida because she had a unibrow and was in art class. I recognized Frida by her tiger-gait walk. If I were being dishonest, I would say she looked in need of saving. Back then, we’d assumed the consequences of whoring ourselves, of being loose, would be a looseness of the body. Perhaps skin struggling to hang onto bone. Or some evidence
a meditation on evil (opens the original)
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Chaos & Kismet is moving to Patreon soon.When I was eight, the evilest person I knew was not my Alfa, who routinely splayed his hands on my thighs as he taught me the Arabic alphabet, but my cousin, who was prettier and fairer and everyone liked more.Back then, I didn’t think that I hated her because she was prettier. I thought I hated her because we would always get into fights and she would always win. She would
how to kill an audience (opens the original)
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You must imagine you and your audience as soup. Different pots of soup. Your audience must be watered down until only the faintest hint of onion, perhaps, garlic, remains, as flat on your tongue as a taste of beige. You, on the other hand, must be boiled down until you’re gelatinous. Burning or close to it. Scooped up in a spoon, you must land with a heavy splat in the bowl. The only acceptable way for the audience to stomach you is hardly. You must be chewed on, balked at and ruminated on, your
i want a son, here’s a goat (opens the original)
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Chaos & Kismet is moving to Patreon soon. More details below. It cannot be possible that God works this fast. If she does, then I’m glad she never listened when I asked her to smite my neighbor after he ran over one of my mother’s pigeons. He did it on purpose. He would have deserved it. Wasn’t it just last week that I was telling you about my decision to b
I'm too hungry to think (opens the original)
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Monday, Aug 17, 2026I am too hungry to think, so this is the best possible time for me to write. Is everything with me about writing? I suppose so. For now. I am on a three-day fast as mandated by my soothsayer. He says that I need a spiritual cleanse for my spirit and soul and destiny to be in perfect alignment. Apparently, they’ve been a little wonky. What made them wonk, I have no idea. Evil eye, I suspect.I am on day two. I have things to do, but I cannot do them. I can only sit on my bed wi
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