Half-Empty Doorways and Other Injuries

Poetry for the dead, the dying, and the ghosts. 45 illustrated poems collecting the best of Golds’ noir poetry from 2020 - 2022. Paper lanterns and petty crime. Whiskey bars and beach confessions. One-night stands and the childhoods that led to cheating, self-harm, and paranoia. From OCD and grief to benign inspirations like antiseptic cream and call-waiting, Stephen J. Golds examines life with a sigh only sometimes wistful. Before an urban Japanese backdrop, we ride w/ him amid subway delays and panic attacks, careening cars and horror movies.

Foreword by HLR, poetry features by BF Jones and David Cranmer.

"Stephen Golds writes Poetry, which is a hell of a lot more than what his more famous contemporaries ever seem to manage. It's honest-to-god poetry, as defined by Allan Ginsberg, the borderline-insane act of ‘making private words public.’ In this collection, he reveals himself to be a succinct and lyrical teller of truths, which itself has become a rare & controversial spectacle recently."

~Tony O’Neill, author of Sick City

Paige Johnson is editor in chief of Outcast Press, an indie publisher specializing in transgressive fiction and dirty realism. Her most notable works include Slut Vomit: An Anthology of Sex Work and In Filth It Shall be Found. Her first poetry collection is entitled Percocet Summer, and her short story, "Ruffled Feathers," features in A Thin Slice of Anxiety's Anxious Nothings anthology. The latter is the first chapter of her upcoming novel, Where Me & The Vultures Live, about an unlucky Miami cam-girl.

Cody Sexton is the founder of A Thin Slice of Anxiety and Anxiety Press. He is a digital artist and author of many novellas, including Too Many Things Came to Nothing and All the Sweet Prettiness of Life, as well as the sex-themed anthology, Anxious Nothings.