Get the full wave 3 summer 2026 Illicit Zines series at a discounted rate.

Titles include:

Zach Peckham - Full Denim Gimp Suit

Robert Fernandez - Wild Child

Giulia Bencivenga - Quantum Paperweight

Erik Stinson - Steep Valley Builders

Jennifer Valdies - Conventional Peace

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
36 pp.
Printed on vintage bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Fragments and procedures. Masculine ineptitude. Generative failure.

Zach Peckham wrote As If And (New Mundo, 2026) and cycle hum (Sistrum, 2025). He runs Community Mausoleum

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
36 pp.
Printed on vintage bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

“Wild child / Full of grace / Savior of / The human race.” Wild Child by Robert Fernandez is a wrist that smells like Calvin Klein Eternity. It’s like Antigone and Rimbaud grew up together on the playground of Larry Clark’s Bully: “Eating pasta / star soup / at Mike’s / house.” It is as if South Florida in the ’90s were a rainbow glimpsed by a hare through a spider’s web.

Originally from Hollywood, Florida, Robert Fernandez is a poet, translator, and visual artist based in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including Pink Reef (Canarium Books), and the recently released chapbook Las Moradas (arrow as aarow). His work has appeared in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, and he has translated poetry from Spanish into English for the Central Bank of Colombia. More of his work can be found at www.robert-fernandez.com

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
20 pp.
Printed on vintage bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Hallowed objects and a hollowed subject feel their way through time in this epistolary work exploring the confines of soul and body.

Giulia Bencivenga wrote Giulia Bencivenga is a Maniac (Inpatient Press), Unreasonable Whole (Gauss PDF), CUD (nueoi press), Comorbidity or the Reckoning (dirt child press), and Amassing Life (Dead Mall Press). They can be reached at giuliabencivenga@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
24 pp.
Printed on vintage bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

In the years after he joins the work crew, a man finds himself increasingly restless, thoughtful or even agitated. The wages of hard work are difficult thoughts. And even know—nearly a decade behind tools—each thought invites some small, inevitable action. This obscure effort is the construction of poetry. 

Erik Stinson is a writer and carpenter from Seattle. In 2016 he released a book of poetry called Microaggressions. He edited Sense Europa, Perfect Magazine and HTML Giant. 

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
28 pp.
Printed on vintage bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Work poems, walking poems, waking poems, painting poems, radio poems, travel poems, coastal poems, aerial poems, promontory poems, premonitory poems, enemy poems, angel poems

Something simple always breaks me

When the sky is blue
A leaf poses      to be painted

We’re all harlots for beauty      in that way
Wishing to drink the tears of the grass

Jennifer Valdies is a poet from California. With Hunter Larson and Allie McKean, she edits Little Mirror, a critical archive of poetics and biannual journal of poetry. Her work can be read in Annulet, b l u s h, FENCE, mercury firs, NOIR SAUNA, and elsewhere.

Get the full wave 2 winter 2026 Illicit Zines series at a discounted rate.

Titles include:

Sampson Starkweather - Slip on the Ski Mask of Night 

Kai Ihns - Sentiment

SCARLET VIOLET - Alibi Lullaby

Ari Lisner - Nonmagic

Hunter Larson - American Mystic

Stevie Belchak - Anna Delvey Swears She Didn't Dump Those Rabbits

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
32 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Slip on the Ski Mask of Night starts with a List of Demands, asking “for everything / and more,” and doesn’t let up from there—in a job interview with the moon, incredulously some suit asks “umm, it says under employment... poet?” That’s right, now slip on the ski mask of night and go to not work—night knows the real work is living against this. Grab your weapons—truth, memory, mixtapes, a 36-minute kiss, the moon, the desire to be left wrecked by desire—to draw a door in the mountain of suffering as a way to escape, as an invitation:

come
                        let’s walk
                        together 
                        through the dark

Night is more than a book, it’s a prayer in the shape of a knife, a survival guide to whatever this shit is—night knows a way to be at home in the dark, like the stars, like us, shining and shit. It’s an ethos, a map of desire, a brick at a protest, a “cosmic commons,” and like any revolutionary act, it’s made in collaboration with friends, with cover art and comic drawing stylings by artist & poet Mark He. The two poets hatched a plan together after crashing a corporate conference room at night scattered with ski masks, hand-written poems, underground comics, wine, and a whiteboard, complete with characters from the poems—the museum of the moon, some soil from Pittsboro, a coyote on a cliff— like police sketches of the Night’s Most Wanted. 

Night also breaks out of this book into the real, with blue-green stitched NIGHT sewn into a black Ski Mask studded with diamond stars, roses and lilacs embroidered into the neck of Night by poet & artist Madeleine Barnes, who allows Night herself to speak through a series of cut-out paper letterings, lines, lyrics, incantations, demands, and spells. There’s even a cameo by her cats Tux & Rams, who too demand all the animals and people be set free! 

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
32 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Recent Examples on the Web (pulled: January 19, 2026)

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More

Pro-colonialist sentiment is surging among some prominent figures inside the White House and the broader MAGA political movement.—Kayla Hayempour, NBC news, 8 Jan. 2026

Forecasts were mixed this year, with some optimistic, but others had lingering concerns about consumer sentiment, massive investments in artificial intelligence and trade deficits.—Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Jan. 2026 

Shay added to the sentiment of Swift's message in the caption of her video.—Zoey Lyttle, PEOPLE, 8 Jan. 2026 

And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the sentiment in a statement released Tuesday.—Jessica Schladebeck, Mercury News, 8 Jan. 2026

from (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentiment) 

Kai Ihns lives and works in Chicago. Her most recent book of poems is Of (The Elephants/Fonograf Editions, 2024). 

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
32 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

HAIKU

yes I am unwell
you knew but you came in me
go call your police

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
28 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Nonmagic is just like the movies: full of real and imagined romance. Themes include film, reciprocity, obsession, McDonald’s breakfast, NYC vs. LA, queer temporality, and purse sizes.

Ari J. Lisner is a writer, researcher, and film producer in New York City. 

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
32 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

These poems cut like stadium lights through the thick foliage of the inner life. Revolving installations of received feeling and damaged vision. Soft rituals for the next world. The cross section of a city block / glinting like streetlight on a chain. Poetry as spiritual practice, as a lens through which to view the infinite. Poetry as an act of faith.

I love the sound of the train‍ ‍
It’s like money to be alive now

Hunter Larson is a poet from the midwest currently living in western Massachusetts. He is the author of the chapbook Desire Lines (Press Brake, 2025) and was the winner of the Poetry Project’s 2023 Lisa Brannan Prize. He co-edits the poetry journal and critical archive Little Mirror.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
32 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

A Nepo baby’s runway debut, Kylie and Timmy kissing, illness, domesticity, weather, fast-food chains, Walmart yard toys. In Anna Delvey Swears She Didn’t Dump Those Rabbits, everything is sacred, which is to say nothing is: Page Six spectacle bleeds into vital thought and runs, the world’s noise filters through the body until it gives, the feed grazes the sublime—and the poet can't help but call it living. 

what metier
what blinking
what else
can be said

Stevie Belchak is a poet and writer currently living in Costa Rica.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
28 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

A body works and a body hurts. Getting rated on a five-emoji scale by another customer gives way to shoplifted benadryl dreams of neon sunsets and Gina Gershon in Corky’s tank top telling you off. Even in the belly of the beast - torsos rolling / a god dollar - dreams persist in their strangeness, unlatching mind, sounding out. Lyric drifts and slips, forgetful. what you need / is it living / in dislocated chronology. Through cityscapes of sidewalk overgrowth and bedspread laze, an animist erotics emerges. what a rock you are / all warmed by the sun / sucking the wonder / right out of me

Cover art by Nora E Luks 

Ebs Sanders is co-editor of the tiny and the author of Intimacies that did not destroy us (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and A Fallow Channel (Gauss PDF, 2020). They are one of ten 2025 Convent Arts fellows.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
20 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

The Years is burnout transcendence. The underground giving you a hug. This is pure literary gossip—loser-style. It will make you say YABBA DABBA DOO! and think about all the years. Let’s remember them together. Let’s be sisters in the moonlight. 

Nick Hedtke is a contemporary American poet whose work captures the fleeting experience of digital memory and the surreal beauty of everyday life. His poems invite readers into landscapes that shift between the physical and the virtual, the ordinary and the mythic, creating a body of work that is restless and deeply human. Writing about youth, desire, and the tension between freedom and fragility, Hedtke turns moments of vulnerability into vivid, minimalist snapshots. His language moves like a mixtape of late-night rides, internet ephemera, and half-remembered dreams, offering readers a space where time bends and feeling lingers.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
20 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Fugue as state. Fugue as form. Fugue as Spaghetti Western anti-hero drift.

Abigail Garrison is a poet and artist living in Mexico City.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
24 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Multi-color cover variants.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

These poems are new. They talk about love and other catastrophes. 

Deja Carr is an artist and writer of Jamaican descent originally from New York, who currently lives in Amherst and has since the age of 5. Carr is also attending Umass for her Undergraduate degree in English with a minor in Black Studies. Carr is the spearhead behind the project Mal Devisa, which is a songwriting, liberation, and poetry project.  Masterfully a genre-hopper, her work spans everything from soulful rock to unabashed hip hop, lush experimental to folk, lo-fi to jazz. Often accompanied by heavy bass, clever loops, and hard-hitting lyrics – her voice is unmistakable, yet versatile. Her first book is available now through “The Bodily Press” and she work featured in Looky Here, Spirit Duplicator, b l u s h, and more forthcoming. Deja writes about everything, especially love and becoming.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
24 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Bond paper.
Cover variants in assorted colors.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

Football Rockstar is like a rush of adrenaline that has been unleashed by a team of scientists. The poems are the result of the most intense moments of our lives. Football Rockstar shakes the eyes out of your face and then gives them back to you.

Ian Fishman is a poet from Northampton, MA. He is the author of CALM DOWN! (Factory Hollow Press). He drives the poetry fridge, Press Brake.

Chapbook. Poetry.
5.5” x 8.5”
28 pp.
Printed on vintage Eagle A Agawam Bond paper.
Multi-color cover variants.
Hand-stamped with the official seal of Illicit Zines.

*Now removed from sale in the United States. Available only through non-commercial backchannel transactions.

Sirens bathing in the sun
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Axel Cash was educated in the classics at Middlebury. His life is a pursuit of the poetic state of mind.

Get the full summer 2025 illicit zines series at a discounted rate.

Titles include:

Ebs Sanders - Low Ecstasies

Abigail Stallings - Fugue

Deja Carr - Earl Grey

Ian Fishman - Football Rockstar

Nick Hedtke - The Years

Axel Cash - Age of Aquarius