Poem
125th Street
Carl Watson
125th Street
Once there was a Harlem of the mind,
In a New York of green youth and mystery,
Steaming manholes, fevered sleep,
When I was a pilgrim without ambition.
Characters with metal teeth and top hats,
Sn...
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Poem
A conversation between landing craft in the Odessa Port
Jenny Wade
An excerpt from Mayakovsky Maximum Access, selected poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated and with commentary by Jenny Wade.
Buy it on Amazon
A conversation between landing craft in the Odessa Port
Feather-clo...
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Poem
Narcoleptic Blues
Valery Oisteanu
Narcoleptic blues
To Ruth
Sleeping poems burning in my brain
“Solitude” tarot card cries out love supreme
Submerged ice flows turning to blood
Rising and melting through twisted clouds
Waves carry the tsunami tow...
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Poem
Stop
Sarah Sarai
Stop
In an ad agency, Traffic is like
Department of the Shepherds,
or an escort service, housemother, Charon,
ferrying files from account exec. to writer
to art director to the shop to editorial
back to writer...
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Poem
Fake Lies
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
FAKE LIES
The donor class is warping the loom.
Domination is damnation.
Defiance is a shortcut to de-finance.
We have to scrap for all that’s left.
Make of your suffering, charms.
The best things are free (like me...
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Review
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, stories by Denis Johnson, reviewed
Vincent Zangrillo
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden [stories]
Denis Johnson.
Random House. $27
Denis Johnson’s latest, and unfortunately last, volume of short stories, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, published a quarter century after hi...
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Art
Wallace Stevens Loses His Job
William Considine
Moment in flux: Tuesday, February 8, 1916.
Place in passing: 55 Liberty Street, Manhattan, New York City:
a new tower, the Liberty Nassau Building,
Liberty Tower, first called the Bryant Building for
William Cullen Bryan...
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Blade Runner 2049: The Enigma and Exegesis of ‘K’
James Reich
Zwei Selle wohnen ach! In meiner Brust. (Two cells live in my chest.) ... I must go on being a Christian, acting out the role of a genuine revolutionary apostolic Christian, as a strategy: in order to overthrow the Black Iro...
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Poem
Hells Kitchen
Ron Kolm
Hells Kitchen
After the war in Vietnam
Wound down, and my stint
Doing alternative service
Came to an end,
I had to stop
And take stock
Of my situation.
I could return to Pennsylvania
And get a job in a factory
D...
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Essay
I Blame Louise Hay for Trump
Larissa Shmailo
I am listening to Abraham Hicks, whom the well-loved New Age maven Louise Hay, may the Universe rest her soul, calls “one of the best teachers on the planet.” Abraham is an “ascended” energy being channeled by a woma...
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Art
The Dark Side of the North Pole
Darius James
An excerpt from the novel, "Froggy Chocolates"
Froggie woke up curled upside down in a fetal-ball; pretzeled in a tangle of arms, legs, feet and elbows with his nose pinched between the split of another child’s bottom....
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Story
Zombie Hef
Peter Marti
Zombie Hef from beyond the grave
grabs my old junk and yanks
Zombie Hef promises me nubile 20-year-old beauties but
one touch and they crumble into dust and gore
Zombie Hef points his dead pipe at me and leers over the...
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Poem
6 PM ON THE BQE
Joel Allegretti
6 PM ON THE BQE
Waiting to exit,
a dozen cars deep,
I glance out
the driver-side
window and,
beyond six over-
worked lanes,
behold rolling
gray acres of
gravestones.
As the minutes
perish and blow
across ...
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