CIVILIZOO MAGS

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Magazines. Flash fiction and short stories, mostly five to ten minute reads, straight from the hip pen of Russil Tamsen. Pop surrealism that’s inspired by dreams. CIVILIZOO contains fucked up fairy tales featuring human-like animals or animal-like humans. You’ll also hear very grown up echoes of Naked Lunch, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, erotica, and more. The theme gurgling just below the surface of this suite is Denial. Like when your loved one has ghosted you forever, yet your hopeful fantasies gallop on, leaving your rational mind flailing between the past and the future…

Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 / Vol. 3 / Vol. 4 / Vol. 5 / Vol. 6 / Vol. 7

(Later volumes contain a few poems.)

Review of CIVILIZOO:

Russil is not merely a writer, he is a word alchemist with multiple personality syndrome. Perhaps he has spent too much time in the desert? Perhaps not long enough. His stories and poems are spells which enrapture, bedazzle, and lead you down dark paths. They can plunge you into icy waterfalls then deposit you firmly back in your skin – skin which suddenly feels too loose and yet too tight, skin which requires another spell to feel normal again but never will. You carry on reading, trying to plumb the depths of a brain from which the mad hatter would run screaming even as Alice chews one chocolate bar after another to make herself too obese to be removed from her apartment except by the crane outside her fifth floor window, all because she NEVER wants to go down that particular rabbit hole again! Russil affects one, you see. His mad tales are epiphanies and insights that could unsettle a little girl – and many a mere mortal. Read, but be warned: the chocolate bars won’t save you.

– Alex Volker

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