Story
Anus Horribilis
Jim Cory
One morning, in Week Five of a six-week treatment regimen, I stepped before a mirror to discover my pubic hair had absconded.
Gone. All of it. Along with 35 pounds of body weight.
A few months before, I’d ...
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Review
Very Serious Naches – review of A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Story
Ann Levin
The day started out promising enough—the Q got me from my apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue in 15 minutes flat. But nothing, absolutely nothing—not the passage of time, billions...
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Book
The Absence of Angels – an excerpt
Christian X. Hunter
THE ABSENCE OF ANGELS, a novel/memoir by Christian X. Hunter, about his growing up in NYC, from the time of the Fillmore East to the AIDS era, was published by Sensitive Skin Books in April, 2023. You can find it on Amazon, or order it from your local trusted bookseller. Here's a brief excerpt:
I've always loved Manhattan in the hot weather. As a small kid I was sent away to stupid summer camps in the country. I hated them. While being forced to learn the breast stroke in ice-cold water in some mountain lake, I'd be wishing I was at the heavily chlorinated Twenty-third Street pool near the East River, surrounded by thousands of New Yorkers playing and shouting in dozens of languages. While sitting around the campfire with my eyes tearing from smoke and burning my mouth trying to suck some shitty marshmallow off a pointed stick, I'd be thinking about how I'd rather be on Manhattan Avenue hanging out on the hood of a car, downing a sl...
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Review
Between Good Men & No Man at All – poetry by Pam Ward – Review
Marc Olmsted
Between Good Men & No Man at All
By Pam Ward
World Stage Press
$20.00
Poet Richard Modiano first brought Pam Ward to my attention by telling me she was writing the introduction to his poetic collection, The Forbidden Lunchbox. I didn’t know her work, so he read her to me over the phone. I was instantly hooked by her images, candor and the gallows humor known only to those the System does not favor.
Still, as an old white man and apparently retro Post-Beat poet, I would not have had the temerity to review her new work Between Good Men & No Man at All, but I was asked, so here we are.
I already knew we weren’t going to get homogenized Hamilton rap or highbrow slam’s rhyming editorial language (i.e. non-imagistic). Instead I was surprised to be reminded of stumbling into an L.A. skid row grind house for the last half of Sweet Sweetback’s Bad Ass Song. Plus, like all grind house double- and triple-bills, t...
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Story
Santa Fe Three-Way
Stuart Watson
Ben leaned in, urged the others to scoot closer. When they had shrunk their triangle, he reached into the bag at his feet and removed a wooden box.
“Ooh, the evidence would suggest that you have been shopp...
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Story
I’m 74 Years Old and Will Never Own a Driver’s License
David Halliday
On our first date it was quite windy
She told me she sneezed
1. The car was packed. Egg salad sandwiches had been prepared for the journey. There were lots of pickle jars. It was an expedition like the search f...
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Story
BECKETT REINVENTED: THE AGE OF A.I.
Jerry Patrick
(News item: Several of the leading tech companies have announced breakthroughs in the development of Chatbots, which hold promise of eliminating the profession of creative writing. And of course they would also eliminate t...
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Story
The Shadow Lifts Off Before You
bart plantenga
We were speeding at a rate some might consider reckless. But I’m a cabbie, so I know what I’m doing. The man was late and it’s just common courtesy to get him to his destination on time.
To quote fellow cabbie Aust...
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Story
Dog Days
Emily McNally
Though we’ve been treating my daughter’s anxiety for a while, I get fresh worry when I see the violet smudges under her eyes. There’s a weariness in the slump of her shoulders and the way she’s ignoring the cat weavi...
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Story
Glowing
Jared Dillian
Logan smiled awkwardly.
There were only so many economics books she could read during her summer break. She went to the library a few times, but it was filled with mostly children’s books—the economics books were amon...
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Poem
Starless Sky
Judith Lee Herbert
We played on our block––I couldn’t cross the street when I was four––
yellow caterpillars raining from trees in front of our red brick
building. My father told me don’t tell them the names of ou...
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Story
The Closet
Jim Krusoe
Somehow or another Vince has managed to drive his car, the Toyota, into a bedroom closet, and though it is a small car and a fairly large closet, it’s in a closet nonetheless, with dresses and skirts and shirts and pants a...
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Story
Pop-Tarts
Lee Varon
The bar is small with a low black ceiling and a cement floor lit by red lightbulbs. “I Fall to Pieces” plays as she walks in.
He wears a black T-shirt with a picture of a gold toad on it and the word “TOAD” in g...
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Poem
Sunflowers of Bucha
Valery Oisteanu
The Sun is bursting with gunfire across Ukraine Looking at Stash’s photos from the front line
Huge yellow flowers blossom on abandoned tanks
Growing over and under the rusting trucks
Graffiti painted by the weakened sur...
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Review
THE FORBIDDEN LUNCHBOX by Richard Modiano – REVIEW
Marc Olmsted
THE FORBIDDEN LUNCHBOX
By Richard Modiano
Punk Hostage Press
$20.00
(Available on Amazon)
How can I review a book that reviews itself so elegantly in Richard Modiano’s own preface and Pam Ward’s introduction? Then there are remarks by Viggo Mortenson and Ronne Blakely. The list goes on. THE FORBIDDEN LUNCHBOX is, unsurprisingly, a very good, even great book. It is also Richard’s first, at age 71. Not even a prior chapbook of his own, ladies and gentlemen.
What took him so long?
The answer may be found first in his recent 10 years as Executive Director of Beyond Baroque, the Venice Beach, California literary center equivalent of NYC’s Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. Like any true Platonic philosopher-king, he did not ask for it, let alone want it. Like the Roman Empire’s Marcus Aurelius, he ran BB with wisdom, dignity and humbleness. Alec Guinness played Marcus Aurelius in Anthony Ma...
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