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OCCULT HIGH SCHOOL REVOLUTION

$21.95

Michael Chaos, a spell-casting goth boy stuck in Catholic high school, falls hard and fast for a hunky jock/artiste provocateur named Pterodactyl (who is a pterodactyl). As Pterodactyl’s increasingly sacrilegious pranks anger the administration, Michael, along with his Wiccan ex-girlfriend Tonya and best friend Crow (who is a crow) navigate a magical realist world where urban legends, ceremonial magick, and a sinister astral stalker interweave with the mundane realities of math class, keg parties, and football practice. Part Mallrats, part The Craft, part Dennis Cooper novel, Occult High School Revolution is a speculative memoir-in-verse, a hybrid of poetry and prose, and a love letter both to young queer people and to the generation who came after Gen X and before Millennials. 


Michael Chaos, a spell-casting goth boy stuck in Catholic high school, falls hard and fast for a hunky jock/artiste provocateur named Pterodactyl (who is a pterodactyl). As Pterodactyl’s increasingly sacrilegious pranks anger the administration, Michael, along with his Wiccan ex-girlfriend Tonya and best friend Crow (who is a crow) navigate a magical realist world where urban legends, ceremonial magick, and a sinister astral stalker interweave with the mundane realities of math class, keg parties, and football practice. Part Mallrats, part The Craft, part Dennis Cooper novel, Occult High School Revolution is a speculative memoir-in-verse, a hybrid of poetry and prose, and a love letter both to young queer people and to the generation who came after Gen X and before Millennials. 


Praise for OCCULT HIGH SCHOOL REVOLUTION

Occult High School Revolution follows Michael Chaos (an avatar for author Michael Bondhus) and the band of misfits who form his social circle during the high-stakes final year of high school. Using a formally adventurous collaging of scripts, school essays and poem assignments, memories, spells, and other ephemera, Bondhus unveils a cast of unforgettable characters who—be they human, bird, or dinosaur—evoke our empathy and care through confessional monologues and urgent conversations. What’s most magical here is how seamlessly the occult world of the book aligns with the urgency of the teen experience, caught in the liminal space between childhood and adulthood. Each character makes painstaking steps toward becoming their full selves, even while performing a social version of themselves that may or may not be authentic. Bondhus’s work is, as promised, chaotic in the best way: a stitched-together narrative built of incongruous parts that somehow hang together just right. This is a miraculous book that deepens with each rereading.


CHARLES JENSEN

About MICHAEL MCKEOWN BONDHUS

Michael McKeown Bondhus (he/they; formerly Charlie) is an Irish-American writer. His speculative memoir-in-verse, Occult High School Revolution is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in January 2027. A poetry chapbook, Portrait of the Autist as a Middle-Aged Man, will be released by Squares & Rebels in September 2026. Previous poetry books include Divining Bones (Sundress, 2018) and All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), winner of the Thom Gunn Award. 

Bondhus’s horror fiction has appeared in Chthonic Matter Quarterly and Ghostlight and has been read on the Nocturnal Transmissions (AUS) podcast. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Hotel Amerika, Hayden’s Ferry Review, diode, and elsewhere. He’s received multiple awards and residencies, most recently a 2026 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He teaches English at Raritan Valley Community College and lives in Jersey City, NJ. More at: https://michaelbondhus.com. Instagram: BondhusPoetry