INTERSTITIAL UPDATE FROM DOG TEETH

a little between issue(s) catch-up

DOG TEETH is making slow but steady progress again after our long break, and we want to say THANK YOU again to everyone who stuck it out with us for their patience and support! While we get our paws under us, we wanted to keep you all in the loop about what we have going on! There’s so much cool shit in this one so I hope you love it <3

NEW WEBSITE

We’ve updated our website! The old site no longer exists, and we’ve migrated over to dogteethlit.neocities.org - the new site still hosts all our published issues and information on submitting and the mag’s ethos in general, but it’s still something of a work in progress as we’re working on ways to add some cool new stuff to it! We also added a lil online guestbook you can sign to say hey (which we would LOVE!! please do!), and a button you can click through to view the Sites for Palestine webring project which is full of great resources.

We migrated over to neocities for two reasons: 

1. our old site was hosted on Wix, which is a Zionist company, and is on the BDS Boycott list 

2. neocities’ customisation options and old web feel was just such a great fit for what we want the mag to be, and our options are much more open in terms of adding cool stuff and making the site ours in a much less aesthetically bland, corporatised way

We hope you love the new site, and continue to check back in as we work on it! 

ISSUE THREE: PERIPHERY

In case you missed it: submissions for issue three: PERIPHERY are open now! We’ve had a really wonderful set of subs so far, but we are always hungry for more! They’ll stay open until October 15th, so you have time to work on your most liminal, most in-between, most slippery pieces! 

Some thoughts on the theme, since I’ve talked about a little over on twitter, but wanted to expound on it some more. I picked PERIPHERY for this issue because my life lately has been very transitional, and I’ve found myself (even more) fascinated (than usual) with liminality and the edges of things. I think it’s something that resonates with my queerness a lot, and I know the same is true for the queer friends I’ve mentioned it to. I want this issue to explore the places where identities and experiences fray a little about the edges; the places in the world where you straddle two lines, or watch along the fringes. I want it to explore opening seams and transitions and half-light. But I’m also interested in the spooky, liminal, ghost-in-the-corner-of-your-eye feeling that comes with change! Haunted houses, haunted humans, haunted horses: I’m eager for them all!

PERIPHERY is also a great opportunity to get weird with form; I want experimental shapes and slithering definitions and hybrid pieces that you struggle to put in a box. 

COMMUNITY COLUMN

We asked for art that make you think of PERIPHERY and you delivered!! Enjoy the little selection below and don’t forget: you can submit your own un-themed musings, manifestos and essays to the newsletter here any time! 

Transformation - Adam Zagajewski

-recommended by @swearjaragain on twitter

I haven’t written a single poem
in months.
I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper,
pondering the riddle of power
and the reasons for obedience.
I’ve watched sunsets
(crimson, anxious),
I’ve heard the birds grow quiet
and night’s muteness.
I’ve seen sunflowers dangling
their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman
had gone strolling through the gardens.
September’s sweet dust gathered
on the windowsill and lizards
hid in the bends of walls.
I’ve taken long walks,
craving one thing only:
lightning,
transformation,
you.

after mabon - nat raum 

- originally published in Paper Teeth issue one; go check out FRUITCAKE here

After Stardew Valley

my want to disappear to a cottage on
a mountain riverbank is brought to you
by the smell of freshly cut grass &
a secret love for yarn-speckled white
carpet. october is déjà vu weather,

rumours (specifically “dreams”) weather,
petunias wilting in antique church planters &
an olive sapling stretching all its gangly
limbs westward for the afternoon sun.
four o’clock’s jaune d’or mixes with the
carpet of crunched canary poplar leaves laid
over the lawn. i still prefer fall in Pelican Town,
with only forest-spirit voices for company &
not october’s ghosts whispering “let the bodies
keep the score” as i sway to seventies guitar
riffs in the kind of breeze i used to
daydream about.

3 MICROS by [sarah] Cavar

-originally published in X-R-A-Y; go check them out here

Elephants think they are the size of dogs

Who can fault them, outwitting their great heft? And I am the size of Grammy’s voice at the burnt crack beneath her knife. Her grandmother, mème, would eat two toasts per day, no grease, between her prayers alone. Face against the floor. Grammy takes hers with coffee and a camel. An earlier version of this piece contained incriminating information on           but I got rid of her. An earlier draft of this piece contained incriminating information on           

1

2

3

4

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Grammy once described clothing as forgiving and I imagined a wardrobe built only by resentment. She spoke between smokes of her deathdream: a forest, a fuck, a rainstorm, alone. I can’t breathe around you, granddaughter tells her fore. Now you are a featherbed. Now I am a rib. Who can fault me for outwitting my body.
____________________________________________________
1 having gone the distance as it were from the scene

2 of which dried up carbon, or perhaps the sound of scraping

3 hitherto unknown but as measure of license

4 and perhaps local to the knife or even the greed

***

Joan: A Eulogy 

Dear Joan, 

The spaghetti went cold in my mother’s mouth. You stood there with your hand raised and ready to fire, like a petty tower. 

I promise I will not be reasonable about this. 

Dear Joan,

Your place has no toys. Four items under the television: a holey tennis ball, an old book, a pen, a key. The children’s place, you called it. You speak to my mother with your oblivious. Goodness is a series of good acts / I stab the ball with the nub of your pen. 

Dear Joan,

Your fat old cat is afraid. My father tempts her with soft wet tuna. He wears gloves in the basement with you. With her. It is difficult to know who is when, this memory. You, aching and raging from the bed. Afraid is a dangerous animal. 

She is upstairs these days, a dark trace at my mother’s feet. Frightful bastard. You are.

***

RUNNING 

If I were the person I thought I once was this spring evening I’d walk miles in my mother’s old sweatshirt not out of hatred for my body but out of sheer sick cold. I would smell manure familiar to me and invented by the dairy midway between my home and the school where I learned I was fat. In that story, I become thin the way others grow up: gradually, adding with patience restraints, compunctions, ligatures, weights; steel where once was air. In my hometown is a correctional facility, another word for prison. When inmates escaped we kids hid in a dark corner of the classroom as in active shooter drills. Afterward we ate lunch. Today is any other March Wednesday. My arms with bumps or perhaps goosegrief                         I am feeling perhaps even grief for the girl whose few words concerned the grief I mean the geese of her sister: good geese, kind. At the correctional facility she wound mandalas into ink at her bed while I, adjoining, jogged in place. You see there is a point that you get to when you forget to be hungry and begin to run into traffic. Sometimes I grieve that feeling the way my mother has tacit-promised to grieve me, if                      At present the sun is melting and I am about to bike from this place to the the apartment in which I keep my sad food and sometimes food for strangers. When I reach the traffic light I will consider my bicycle, legs, white shirt, bare arms now thick with ink. Being disordered is a manner of being out of order, that is, insequential, that is, inconsequential. I think of my mother. I love you. Your sweatshirt is in my closet.

A reflection on Our Sanguine Record

- Robin m.f. Luz with editing from Jade Winterburn

WHY DO WE CONTINUE,

DESPITE THE PAIN?

...we want to exist between or outside of the boundaries that define genre convention...

Hello DOGTEETH! We're very happy for the opportunity to write upon our music. our flag-ship rapper/producer: Binnie is a broken animal, an utter headcase with some half-attained aspirations of womanhood. Its musical stylings have oftentimes been described as crunchy and reminiscent of videogames. 

... ° ° BINNIE MF - OUR SANGUINE RECORD 

For our latest release--Our Sanguine Record--we finally let go of attempting to keep the listener comfortable. Much of our lifetime we’ve hidden great and important parts of ourselves in a dangerous transformation ritual known as masking. Masking hid us: not just from perceived threats, not just from perceived others, but it also forced us to hide from ourselves. The most apparent mask we removed for /Our Sanguine Record/ was ditching the autotune and going for otherwise less altered vocals, with exception being made for that which would have been thematically inadvisable to re-record. 

We spent over two years with some of these songs before publishing, thus many differently affected personhoods contributed to the development of the tracks. Nursing demos for two years, the eventual sonic result reaked of miasma, containing deeply textural and spatial soundscapes inspired by the sounds of shoegaze, dark ambient and power electronics. An emergent feature of all the time spent was that the contexts for one of these songs' tone changed drastically throughout when our various relationships tied to the song caught alight or were snuffed, and thus the song itself went through corresponding drastic tonal shifts.

The record is a product of a deep entrenchment in a digital malaise; an honest portrayal of who we have been and what we have felt, having been where we've gone. Our Sanguine Record contains immense brutality. We hope our work finds you well and if it doesn’t, we certainly hope it leaves you doing better. 

... ° ° Listening Activity

We've devised some open-ended questions you may ask yourself in relation to our album, or any piece of music you find. We’ve included a generic sample answer for the first question at the bottom. All response are optional. 

BAND/ARTIST NAME: 

________________________________________________________________

RECORD NAME: 

________________________________________________________________

1. Would you describe this record's depictions of pain as being more inspiring or depressing?

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

2a. Why does the artist bring in a particular noise at a particular time? 

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

2b. Why does the artist remove a particular noise at a particular time?

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

3a. Does this record sound better on speakers or headphones? 

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

3b. What is the ideal listening context for this record?

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

4. Are the events described within this record allegorical or biographical?

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

5a. Why would the artist decide to publish such a thing? 

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

5b. The record was published in order to hurt us.(Please circle your answer.)

(TRUE) (FALSE)

6. (EXTRA CREDIT) What do you think the artist's favorite intervals are? 

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

    ǝpɐɯ ǝq oʇ uoᴉʇɐuᴉɯɹǝʇǝp ɐ ɥɔns ʍollɐ plnoʍ ɥɔᴉɥʍ ʇxǝʇǝɹd ɹo uoᴉʇɔᴉdǝp ɹǝd ʇxǝʇuoɔ ʇnoɥʇᴉʍ ɹǝɥʇᴉǝ ǝsooɥɔ ʇ,uplnoʍ I '(ƃuᴉɹǝɟɟns uᴉ ssol ǝɥʇ sɥƃᴉǝʍʇno ƃuᴉʌᴉʌɹns ɟo ɟɟoʎɐd ǝɥʇ ǝɥʇ sǝɯᴉʇǝɯos sɐ 'ʎlᴉɹɐssǝɔǝu uo sᴉsɐɥdɯǝ ɥʇᴉʍ) ʇᴉ ɥʇɹoʍ uᴉɐd ǝɥʇ llɐ ǝʞɐɯ ʎlᴉɹɐssǝɔǝu ʇ,usǝop ʞɹoʍ lnɟᴉʇnɐǝq ɐ ʇɐɥʇ punoɟ ƃuᴉʌɐH 1.

... ° ° Equipment Used 

Fruity Loops Studio 17, 20 & 24 (with liberal usage of 3xOsc & Patcher); GVST; sforzando; Melda's MFreeFXBundle; Arturia's MicroFreak; Korg's volca sample; laptop & various phone microphone; Tascam DR-03; 

Robin m.f. Luz with editing from Jade Winterburn

Please feel free to direct relevant inquiries or Listening Activity responses to binnie@ravemail.com

DOG TEETH’S BEST OF THE NET 2025 NOMINATIONS

We are so excited to announce our nominations for Best of the Net’s 2025 anthology! We had so many gorgeous and resonant works in issue one - INTERSPECIES, and we really hope that you’ll return to these pieces and remind their creators how lovely their work is. Our nominations are:

ANGELA QUINTON - Spit

CAIRN DES LIONS - Whip Stitch

[sarah] CAVAR - between the axe

Thank you so much to everyone who has ever submitted to DOG TEETH, and to all our contributors for their truly humbling trust and support in us. You’re the reason we exist! And, of course, a huge thanks to our nominees for sharing their gorgeous work with us all, and allowing DOG TEETH to be a home for it! 

FUNDRAISING UPDATES

A reminder that we are still fundraising for Medical Aid for Palestine; you can go donate via the link here or over on twitter via our pinned post, and if you email us proof of donation, we’ll send you a DOG TEETH sticker! They’re huge and glittery and we’re excited about them! Here’s one in the wild!

Also: in case you missed it over on twitter, we’re running a poll! It’s in the very early stages of planning, but if we were to put out a charity fundraising issue of DOG TEETH, we want to know how you would prefer it be priced! We’re adding the poll here as well as over on twitter, but you only need to vote in one of them! If you have any further comments, questions, or thoughts on our charity issue, feel free to leave them here on substack, or over on twitter!

THANK YOU SO MUCH 

Thanks as always for reading, and for your continued support of DOG TEETH! I love making this silly little magazine, and I want it to be as accessible and fun and gross and community-minded as possible! Come chat dogs and teeth and writing and gory peripheries over on twitter or tumblr! I’m so happy DOG TEETH is finding its niche, and I will see you all around!

Stay strange,

Jack