Poems from the Sideshow - David Oyston

Poems from the Sideshow by David Oyston / 138-page hardback, published in 2025 by Broodcomb Press

[I'm not 100% sure what the price will be... but should be in the $35 range]

Broodcomb Press is a UK publisher specializing in weird fiction and beyond: "Encompassing poetry, strange tales and experimental fiction, Broodcomb Press is a home for the writing that belongs here: disquieting truths about the region ("the peninsula") – tales both eerie and shocking – together with exploring the fantastic/everyday meaning of what it means to be human."

***

Poems from the Sideshow is David Oyston’s memoir of his early life in Riemann’s peninsular travelling show, by turns shocking, experimental and moving. An anomaly in the Broodcomb Press list, The Sideshow opens up an ill-lit door to one of the shadowier realities of life on the peninsula—

“Fougasse from The Horrors dies. Sorrow. In the slackness that comes from the body’s death of tension lies strangeness, stranger-ness: gums sharpen teeth, eyes sink, skin shrinks from nail beds. What remains is gravity’s absolute dominion, deeper even than flesh. His name’s Henry. Fougasse is a form of bread he did not resemble. Erik strains to curve the wood, for the dead leave for the forest in coffins the shape a person lived in. Truth comes. Their names are not their names, kid. Long Girl. Nib. Miss Nelly. The names smooth over their faces silent as a casket lid.”