D. Matthew Urban

@breathinghead.bsky.social

947 Followers 979 Following

weird fiction person • TX → NY • stories here and there • SHAKY PICTURES OF VANISHED FACES out now from Cursed Morsels Press! • he/him • https://dmatthewurban.com

A 1793 etching entitled Hell Broke Loose, or, The Murder of Louis. It shows Louis XVI being executed by guillotine on a scaffold surrounded by soldiers while devils fly around playing drums and horns and singing the Revolutionary anthem "Ça Ira."
An edited version of the "two cakes" meme. In the first panel, Prometheus contemplates two plates, one with a small liver and one with a large liver; he says, "aw man yesterday's liver is way better than today's." In the second panel, the eagle approaches the same two plates with a knife and fork, saying "HOLY SHIT! TWO LIVERS!"
A short video of dark water moving
Epigraphs of “Tropicália” by Ananda Lima: “I’m only interested in what is not mine.” - Oswald de Andrade, The Cannibalist Manifesto, 1928 “Fred, what we want is, I think, what everyone wants, and what you and your viewers have—civilization … We want to be civilized.” - Brain Gremlin, Gremlins II: The New Batch, 1990
A circular drawing of a fuzzy bee with a white cat clinging to its back
A copy of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories by Cynthia Gómez in a bookstore window, with a label that says “Signed by the author!”
a beach strewn with molting elephant seals, waves breaking to the left, rocky and grassy slopes in the background
6 seconds of a black and white cat staring fixedly at the camera while sitting on a stone in a garden
Book cover of Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro, translated from the French by Eve Hill-Agnus. The cover image shows a cutaway view of the ocean from surface to floor, a container ship on the surface dwarfed by blue depths
White cherry blossoms on dark branches against a blue sky
A tabby cat sticking her head out from under the flap of a cardboard box lying on its side
A stack of paperbacks: * Persona by Aoife Josie Clements * Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette * Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov * The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay * Human Sacrifices by María Fernanda Ampuero * Panics by Barbara Molinard
Harp, synth and wordless vocals with plenteous echo and reverb as smoke drifts in the stage lights
a mobile of black sections connected by wires hanging from a white ceiling
Wood engraving of the capture and burning of Washington, D.C. by the British in 1814. Soldiers gather in the foreground while a classical-style building burns in the background, clouds of smoke rolling through the sky.
a tabby cat, medium gray with dark gray stripes and hints of light brown, curled up on a white couch with a gray blanket and a beige blanket
painted interior of a 6th-century BCE Greek vase depicting the god Dionysus sailing through a sea full of dolphins on a ship with grape vines growing from the mast
Cover art for Fraidy Cat Quarterly Volume 8: Gnaw. Image of a snowy, shadowy forest, two eyes glowing from the darkness
Young people in Christmas/Santa-related garb walking down a street in the East Village
A white van parked at the curb of a city street. The van’s open back doors show a cargo space full of skinned animal carcasses, perhaps goats or sheep
A four-panel cartoon captioned "My plans for the next 6 months." First panel. A woman in an office surrounded by ringing phones and work-related demands Second panel. The woman putting on a bear suit Third panel. The bear-suited woman walking through leafless woods toward a cave Fourth panel. The bear-suited woman hibernating in the cave alongside two bears
Fry from Futurama brandishing a fistful of money, his expression one of grim determination
Five weird horror writers sitting in a row in the children’s section of a bookstore
Join us for Indie Horror Night, featuring D. Matthew Urban, OF Cieri, Saskia Nislow, LC von Hessen, and Sasha Ravitch! When: 7pm on Tuesday November 11. Where: Book Culture LIC, 26-09 Jackson Ave., Long Island City, NY 11101
The Birthday Party - Junkyard
nachos from Los Tacos City Habanero
Frame from The Simpsons S4E10: a newscaster reading from a stack of pages, "Coming up next, an hour-long episode of Mama's Family."
Join us for Indie Horror Night, featuring D. Matthew Urban, OF Cieri, Saskia Nislow, LC von Hessen, and Sasha Ravitch! When: 7pm on Tuesday November 11. Where: Book Culture LIC, 26-09 Jackson Ave., Long Island City, NY 11101
Selfie of me stooped forward looking into the camera while a tabby cat with alert expression and motion-blurred tail perches on my back
A sign in Gettysburg, PA labeled “The Last Line-of-Duty Deaths on Gettysburg Battlefield,” commemorating two Marines who died in a plane crash during a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge in 1922. On the ground next to the sign lies a colorful object, which closer inspection proves to be none other than…
Signs on the edge of a park in Gettysburg, PA. The sign on the left says “Recreation Park / Borough of Gettysburg.” The sign on the right says “Welcome to GARA / Gettysburg Area Recreation Authority”
A gray and white cat sleeping on an upholstered chair next to two artificial cats, one orange and one gray
A rusty metal bear on the roof of a hardware store in Gettysburg, PA
Frame from The Simpsons S11E12: two monkeys knife-fighting on the deck of a boat, surrounded by cheering gamblers
Mid-00s photo of a dark-haired twentysomething with sideburns playing Big Buck Hunter II in a southeast Texas truck stop
A blurry photo of a tabby cat’s face looking out from under a bookshelf
parakeets chattering and flying around a large nest (nests?) attached to a metal utility pole near the Colorado River in Austin, TX
Studies in Suffocation I by Robyn O’Neil, a graphite drawing showing bowed heads mostly submerged in a dark, textured substance
The salaryman from Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1989), more metal than man at this point
Still from The Happening (2008): Mark Wahlberg looking very concerned against the background of a grassy field, trees in the distance
Mark E. Smith
Don Draper standing in front an ad mock-up displaying the words OKLAHOMA CIRCUS PUNK above an outline of the state of Oklahoma
A tabby cat lounging on a red blanket, leaning against a cushion embroidered with a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, her expression benevolent yet aloof
A tabby cat lounging on an office chair, her expression resembling a sly or dreamy smile
A photo of a tree with a small region circled in red
From Moby Dick, chapter 93, "The Castaway": But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and Stubb’s boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
Quote from "Berryman" by W. S. Merwin: "he suggested I pray to the Muse / get down on my knees and pray / right there in the corner and he / said he meant it literally"
La Jetée
Screenshot from The Simpsons S7E24, "Homerpalooza": a middle-aged Abe Simpsons points at the viewer and says, "It'll happen to you."
a bowl of delicious homemade guacamole
An “I Voted Early” sticker from the NYC Democratic primary stuck to a T-shirt with a deer on it
A copy of Shaky Pictures of Vanished Faces: Stories by D. Matthew Urban, with a sticker on the front that says “Autographed Copy”
27 books arranged on a bed
A painting on the inside wall of a bus shelter depicting a large, happy-looking seal with a gold star on (or possibly in) its belly. The seal is resting on the ocean floor, surrounded by kelp, sea creatures and what appears to be a scuba-diving Winnie the Pooh
The cover of Shaky Pictures of Vanished Faces: Stories by D. Matthew Urban, showing a person whose head is a nightmare tornado of flesh and teeth sitting at a table with a cup of coffee
A picture of Joni Ernst next to the headline "Defending Medicaid Cuts, Ernst Tells Iowans, 'We All Are Going to Die'"
Still from Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse (Feigelfeld, 2017). A young woman stands on a mossy, wooded slope, a swaddled baby in her arms
Image from Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997): a man stands in a field looking at a large, dilapidated building
Portrait of Laurence Sterne by Joshua Reynolds. Sterne is leaning on a stack of papers and smiling, a finger to his temple
Screenshot from The Simpsons S7E2: A lab-coated Dr S Spirographing with great intensity