Nutritional Facts Mock the Lord: Review of Edwin Callihan’s Baculum

Dee Holloway Under Review:Baculum. Edwin Callihan. Weirdpunk Books, 2026. A baculum is the bone found in the penis of many placental mammals—but, crucially, not in humans. Edwin Callihan’s novella Baculum, currently available from Weirdpunk Books, probes a similar place of essential lack. Nominally an entry into Callihan’s Mgo landscape (Histories of Mgo, Strange Spells), Baculum requires no prior knowledge of previous texts. It’s possible prior knowledge might work against the reader, as there is little “lore” of the type beloved by curatorial audiences; in its place, an ever-expanding cosmos of uncertain boundaries and contradictory mechanics. Callihan’s Mgo stories are fantastical, working-class, sited in lineages of filth and satire. On its surface a simple-enough story of a guy visiting the worst house in town to score, Baculum is—like a vagina, incidentally—a potential space, bigger on the inside. It approaches real transgression in a post-transgressive era, where nearly all…