New fiction in Crow & Cross Keys: Bone Carver’s Elegy

“Bone Carver’s Elegy,” a new dark fantasy flash fiction piece just published in Crow & Cross Keys!

Excerpt: “The art of poppet making is not only in the carving, in the animating force one wills into it; it is in the selection of materials, in their preparation. Flesh must be uncorrupted, boiled off the bones then carefully cured. Vital essence must be breathed into them, the herbs for the smoker gathered under a waning moon. And the marrow we extract for the bonding infusion must be preserved in honey to keep it from turning foul, as that in turn fouls the corpse’s movement, and leaves a rancid taste on the tongue.”

You can read the complete story here.

Awards Eligibility 2023

Here is my eligibility post for 2023. I’ve had a very fortunate publishing year and I’m grateful for the publishers who believed enough in my work to give it a home. Aside from my visual poetry book, SCARLET, the work in this list is speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, sci-fi), and that work is mostly flash or micro-fiction. I’ve provided links to read the work for free, where possible, and I’m in the process of going through my publishing agreements to see if I can provide textual copies of the pieces that require magazine subscriptions to read.

I hope that if you enjoy any of these pieces, you will consider nominating them for any awards they might be eligible for.
 

Books

“SCARLET”
Published by Spuyten Duyvil, Jul. 23

Description: A digital visual/poetic meditation on the psychological and physical toll of social isolation during the COVID-19 lockdown. The project documents the social, political, and personal disruption of the pandemic as society moved through its various mutations and surges. The digital/visual poems in the collection were created through erasure of the novel The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London, collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life during the pandemic, with the poem titles being derived from objects contained in each glitched still life.

Read excerpts here.

Or, you can buy the book here.
 

Short Fiction

“The Limits of Resource Allocation”
Published in Black Sheep, Aug. 23. 1400 words.

Description: A necropunk story about a backstreet biohacker trying to free her partner’s corpse from a post-death, debt-labor contract. Pluck, snark, and well-deserved consequences ensue.

Read it for free here.

Or, you can buy the issue here.

Flash & Micro-fiction

“Suture”
Published in Trembling with Fear, Nov. 23. 100 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“Sin Eater”
Published in SciFanSat, Oct. 23. 556 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“Fragrant Bodies”
Published in Tiny Frights, Oct. 23. 50 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“Bitter”
Published in Tiny Frights, Oct. 23. 50 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“It Has Come to This”
Published in Trembling with Fear, June 23. 100 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“Still Life with Saw Blade and Gnawed Bones”
Published in Tales to Terrify, Oct. 23. 552 words.

Listen to it for free here.

 
“The Burning Season”
Published in Fantastic Other, Aug. 23. 588 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“Behind the Garden Wall”
Published in Burningword Literary Journal, Oct. 23. 333 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“Waiting for Home”
Published in Sci-fi Shorts, June 23. 700 words.

Read it here.

 
“Euphony, or a Study in Xenolinguistics”
Published in Scribes Micro Fiction, Aug. 23. 100 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“What Remains”
Published in Dark Moments, Black Hare Press, Jul. 23. 100 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“The Colony”
Published in Sirens Call, June 23. 100 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“The Gateway”
Published in Microfiction Monday, June 23. 100 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“The Walker”
Published in Dark Moments, Black Hare Press, June 23. 100 words.

Read it for free here.

 
“Red”
Published in Fifty-word Stories, June 23. 50 words.

Read it for free here.

SCARLET now available from Spuyten Duyvil Press

SCARLET, is a digital visual/poetic meditation on the psychological and physical toll of social isolation during the COVID-19 lockdown. The project documents the social, political, and personal disruption of the pandemic as society moved through its various mutations and surges. The digital/visual poems in the collection were created through erasure of the novel The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London, collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life during the pandemic, with the poem titles being derived from objects contained in each glitched still life.

The book can be purchased from Amazon or the publisher at Spuyten Duyvil Press.

Excerpts of the project can be read in the following journals: FIVES: A Companion to Denver Quarterly, Matter, IceFloe Press: Pandemic Dispatches, The Indianapolis Review, Star 82 Review, Experiment-O, The Conjuncture, Heavy Feather Review, FERAL, Scapegoat Review, Imposter, Harpy Hybrid Review, Train, The New Verse News, Unlost Journal, DISGUST: Unhealthy Practices, East Window Gallery, and Posit.

Recent Speculative Fiction

I have new speculative fiction (sci-fi and horror) published or forthcoming in Savage Planets, Sci-Fi Shorts, Tales to Terrify, Trembling With Fear, The Fantastic Other, Dark Moments, Dark Horses, Shacklebound Books, Microfiction Monday Magazine, The Sirens Call, and Fifty-word Stories.

An Evening of Poetry & Storytelling

San Diego Poet Laureate Jason Magabo Perez comes home to Oceanside to share work alongside local North County poets including Karla Cordero, Angela Narciso Torres, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Sharon Elise, Angelica Yañez, Bruce Hoskins, & Francesco Levato. The poetry reading will be followed by a conversation about poetry & community empowerment facilitated by local community leader Jimmy Figueroa.

Thursday, April 27, 2023 7:00pm
Oceanside Theatre Company
at the Historic Sunshine Brooks Theater

$5 for students, $10 general admission

Selection of Ilaria Poems published by Broken Lens Journal

These digital-visual poems collage found language with imagery created via artificial intelligence (AI). They represent a human-machine collaboration across process, media, and technology. Language I collect from a separate research project into burial practices, ritual cannibalism, and spiritualism serves as text for the poems and as textual input for the AI’s algorithm. The AI then builds artwork from the textual input, using background imagery I have curated as a seed.

Visit Broken Lens Journal to read more.

Recent Publications from SCARLET

My current project, SCARLET, has had excerpts recently published in FIVES: A Companion to Denver Quarterly, Matter, IceFloe Press: Pandemic Dispatches, The Indianapolis Review, Star 82 Review, Experiment-O, The Conjuncture, Heavy Feather Review, FERAL, Scapegoat Review, Imposter, Harpy Hybrid Review, Train, The New Verse News, Unlost Journal, DISGUST: Unhealthy Practices, East Window Gallery, and Posit.

SCARLET began as a digital visual/poetic meditation on the psychological and physical toll of social isolation during the COVID-19 lockdown. The project has since evolved to document the social, political, and personal disruption of the pandemic as we move through its various mutations and surges.

The digital/visual poems are created through erasure of the novel The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London, collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life during the pandemic. The titles of poems in the series are then derived from objects contained in each glitched still life.

Glitching is a technique that introduces errors into the code of a digital file or stream that distorts its presentation. The error-induced fracturing of images in SCARLET is intended to defamiliarize everyday objects and surroundings to reflect the psyche under the constant stress of the pandemic.

The Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic novel, published in 1912, set in California during the year 2073, after the world’s population is decimated by an uncontrollable pandemic.

(publications list updated 9.20.22)

Review of Arsenal/Sin Documentos at The Literary Review (TLR)

“Levato focuses us on a central moral question: what does US citizenship mean if we are willing to torture and set up borders around it?”—PK Eriksson

Read the review at The Literary Review (TLR).

Review of Arsenal/Sin Documentos at Lit Pub

“Francesco Levato has created a disquieting and challenging book that provokes more questions than answers. Reading the book pulled me into a dialogue with it, almost an argument, questioning it as much as it questioned me, challenging me as I challenged it.”—Leonard Temme

Read the review at Lit Pub.

New Review of Arsenal/Sin Documentos

“This book is going to piss you off […] Arsenal / Sin Documentos is an urgent study of governmental language that dictates how power is exploited through bureaucratic SOPs. Levato’s form may be referred to as erasure, blackout, cross-out, redaction, defacing, or whatever. But what’s really happening is an exposé, a divulgence, an enlightening and necessary peek behind the veil of what’s really going on with less-empowered human beings in America.”—Tom Griffen

Read the review at Heavy Feather Review or Compulsive Reader.