Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. Ed. Bradley Sands. Issue 6. Northampton: No Girls Allowed Press, 2007. 104 pp. Paperback. $5.99.

Despite being around for just two years, Bust Down the Door & Eat All the Chickens has quickly become the figurehead publication for the Bizarro, Absurdist, and modern Surrealist literary movements.  In every issue, editor/author Bradley Sands (It Came from Below the Belt) assembles an impressive line-up of groundbreaking prose from some excellent up-and-coming and established writers.  The release of issue six continues the magazine's tradition of high-quality, offbeat fiction.

Julius Henry begins with an amusing and compelling tale of two people and the strange item they find.  The story is told entirely through dialogue between the two characters, a technique used to great effect here.  Bryson Newhart is next with "Too Much Psychic Jesus Blood," a balls-to-the-wall Bizarro story of a man who comes home from war and the strangeness that awaits him. What Newhart's story lacks in coherency, it more than makes up for in creative scenarios and wordplay.

Stephen Graham Jones gives us a quiet, paranoid tale of the existential horror one worker feels during an inspection.  Anyone who has worked a soul-crushing service job should enjoy this piece.  From D. Harlan Wilson, we get the first chapter from his upcoming book, Blankety Blank: A Novel of Vulgaria. The chapter is irksome in that as soon as the reader becomes engrossed, it ends.  This is a good preview for his next novel.

Ryder Collins provides what may be the most uniquely written piece in the magazine about a hip traveling literature/word festival and the issues surrounding it. Told through a variety of perspectives, Collins repeatedly shifts focus and offsets the reader. Any story featuring Chuck D and the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson is a winner in my eyes.

Andrew Adams presents a very strange, humorous story of a man whose coma-stricken wife is being "raped" by a scuba diver.  While short, the story packs a powerful punch once it reaches its mind-bending conclusion.  "Clive Confesses" by Anthony Neil Smith is easily the issue's funniest contribution, a first person account of a man who continually attempts to kill himself, but instead continually kills his many lovers by accident.  Jeremy C. Shipp's "Scratch" comes next, a surreal science-fiction tale about a unique manner of reproduction and the personal problems it causes. The story is well-written and imaginative, but it could have used a few more pages to properly flesh out its unusual occurrences.

Finishing the issue is "Robo-Trippin'" by Joey Goebel. This may be this issue's highlight.  It invovles a boy who is frustrated that all of his friends leave him once they start doing drugs. To compensate, his father builds him a robot programmed not to use drugs and to be his friend. Goebel's comical, shocking story challenges notions of free will and conformity.

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens has proven itself to be among the very best of weird fiction journals.  Order an issue at www.absurdistjournal.net.  At $5.99 (plus shipping), no Bizarro fan should be without this magazine.

— Jeff Burk