Meme Drift
Carl Watson
West Midtown, when empty, could seem like an ancient old growth forest formed of concrete, granite, iron and glass. And like such a forest it had a dual nature— peaceful yet simultaneously seething with hidden aggressive l...
Drunken Turkey
Marc Olmsted
We got along and loved each other the way people do who share an interest in drugs and alcohol and sex. We loved each other in an animal way.
We never got married but were together a total of 7 years until it finally f...
school of night 19
Bruce Weber
the monsters have taken over the house
they’re crawling through the refuse
of broken trays of paint
walls and temporary screens
they’re delegating authority
passing their power on to the masks
who remove me from th...
The Auctioneer
Bernard Meisler
My wife showed me the back of a circular, junk mail. There was an ad for an auction the next day. A police auction, items confiscated from felons. Jewelry, artwork, gold coins and such. It was at the community center, right ...
DISPUTABLY 8TH STREET
Joel Allegretti
DISPUTABLY 8TH STREET
W. 8th Street,
Greenwich Village, N.Y.
June 2018
PRIME RETAIL SPACE FOR LEASE
Domino’s
SPACE AVAILABLE
State Farm
PROFESSIONAL SPACE FOR RENT
This isn’t the Tangier souk of leopard-skin...
Smiling Jimmy
Vincent Zangrillo
Gregory Corso loved Mark. Mark loved Jeannie. Jeannie loved Danny who was a high school sweetheart from “Paly High” in Palo Alto. Danny loved Smiling Jimmy. Just want to let you know that Jimmy is dead at the end of this...
Tainting Her
Sharon Olinka
Balthus, Les beaux jours (Golden Days), 1944-45, Oil on canvas
Like Balthus, he paints
a female model
in a chair.
Dabs of sickly green
define her. The air
around her ocher.
Such small ha...
Radio Activity Kills
bart plantenga & Paloma Jet
Excerpt number 3 from Radio Activity Kills, by bart plantenga & paloma jet
DJ Kees flees Amsterdam under mysterious circumstances with teen daughter, Alouette. A new life in the USA leads to an obligatory hitchhiking road...
After the Ash-White Wind
Robert C. Hardin
9/11/01: 8:54 a.m.
My shift has ended and I’m sitting at my computer, finessing a letter to Swedish musician, Tomas Pettersson. Looking out of an eighteenth-story window off Maiden Lane, I notice what might have passed ...
Gerard Petrus Fieret: Lurid and Exalted Photographs
Greg Masters
The women are posing, yes. But they are not engaged in a casual flirtation with a man who has persuaded them to return to his studio with him. I am supposing that the ordinariness of their day in a small town in Holland has ...
Three Poets, Three Books — Café Crazy, We Became Summer, and Blue Lyre
William Considine
Café Crazy, by Francine Witte
We Became Summer, by Amy Barone
Blue Lyre, by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
On Wednesday, June 13, three well-known Downtown New York poets read together from their new books, published w...
RMX
Jürgen Schneider
Amy Winehouse staggers in shortly before midnight. It doesn’t go without notice how unwell she is.
Amy will be DJ’ing. There is a yellow shimmer to her skin and her skinny body looks more fragile than ever, her hands ...
John Ashbery – an Oblique Remembrance
Max Blagg
I was introduced to John Ashbery's poetry in the summer of 1971, by a beautiful young American poet living in London. We met at a church jumble sale in Belsize Square. Her flat was across the street. I woke up on her couch l...
Sixty
Patrick O'Neil
There is nothing easy about turning sixty. The days whip by in a whirlwind, kids look younger, and you can’t understand what they’re even talking about. Cops, bosses, and doctors could be your daughters and sons. Films a...
