Here at Jersey Devil Press, there are three things we look for in a story: strangeness, beauty, and poop jokes. And while this collection is admittedly a little shy on scatological humor, the 18 works collected here are easily the strangest and most beautiful things we’ve ever published.

The 2015 Jersey Devil Press Anthology contains the best work from our last five years, written by some of our favorite authors. We love them in a way we’re not entirely comfortable with.

And we know you’ll feel the same.

Featuring work by Nicola Belte, Jackson Burgess, Christopher DeWan, J.D. Hager, Anna Lea Jancewicz, Liz Kicak, Christopher Lettera, Kimberly Lojewski, Ally Malinenko, Matthew Myers, Ben Nardolilli, Michael Sions, Danger Slater, y.t. sumner, Sloan Thomas, Graham Tugwell, and Yvonne Yu.

Available now. Get a copy at Amazon and Smashwords.

Close-up of Maggie’s Merry Old English Farm

She loves the game because of the optical illusions,
A chance to show off her love of geometry too,
We never see that, of course, it escapes us,
All we can see with our untrained and lazy eyes
Are crashes of color spread on a screen
Masquerading as fecund estates bearing much fruit.

Another windmill has gone up, and a waterwheel
Is quick to follow by a healthy orchard,
Sheep the size of the trees eat in the nearby grass,
Their fat coats helping to keep the venture afloat
For every visitor who comes down to the farm
To see her wainwright and the pixilated vicar in action.

According to her, there is a fine harvest going on,
Crops are just going crazy from bumper to bumper,
The pigs are going to market, somewhere,
We ask her about the bacon and when we get some,
She LOLs and tells us about the dollars raised
By the pork belly futures that have no past or present.

BEN NARDOLILLI currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He has a chapbook, Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish his first novel.