Writing
Carmen Miranda on East 5th Street
Coree Spencer
Most of the kitchen staff and busboys at Mary Ann's Mexican restaurant on Fifth Street and Second Avenue in the East Village are from the Dominican Republic, like Luis, a cook in his early twenties. Despite being just a few...
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Poem
Two Poems About the Village
Arthur Nersesian
EAST VILLAGE REMAINS
Last night
in East Village
the garbage was tossed out
only to wash ashore
along 2nd Avenue
resold by peddlers,
bought by the hopeless few
who see a nostalgia,
a bargain, who take it home
try ...
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Review
TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN – Some Thoughts, No Spoilers
Marc Olmsted
Now that it's likely most of the most-interested have ingested the first 4 episodes of David Lynch's reboot of Twin Peaks on Showtime, I wanted to share some observations.
As an elder, nearly 64, I watched the original se...
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Poem
Perfect
Sarah Bernstein
Perfect
Precise line
Formed
On top of
Precise line
Invisibly
Perfect
Excel at
Gluing at
Handwriting at
Removing
Splinters
Cutting
Bangs
Perfect
Feeling
Walk on
Hot sand
Hand on
Stove
Fingers in
Oil
Boil...
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Writing
Ghosts
Ryan Leone
Back in the days when relationships weren't digitized and couldn't just be deleted, you had to rip down pictures until there were only taped corners left on the wall that would taunt for a lifetime as torn and tiny ghosts.
...
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Timothy Leary Letter to Allen Ginsberg – from Algeria, 1970
Dr. Timothy Leary
Here it is the the third (and final) letter we received anonymously, from Timothy Leary to his friend Allen Ginsberg. Things haven't gone so swimmingly for the dear doctor since his last missive, sent in 1969 from Berkeley. ...
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Classics
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
—1—
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge ...
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Writing
before we could speak
Dennis Cruz
before we could speak
the specter of death
smiling,
Cleopatra
uncrossing her legs.
a small glimpse
into the infinite
then it’s over
a bad dream
lingering
like egg yolk
or menstrual blood
on your tongue
I w...
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Interview
Iain Sinclair — Hard to Beat — in conversation with Chris Kelso
Chris Kelso
What is there to say about Iain Sinclair that hasn’t already been covered a million times before in a million different interviews? Well, probably not a lot actually. Lauded and derided in equal measure, as flaneur, grand ...
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Evergreen
Timothy Leary Letter to Allen Ginsberg, from Berkeley, CA, 1969
Dr. Timothy Leary
OK, as promised here's the second Timothy Leary Letter to Allen Ginsberg. (We received three of these, anonymously, and published the first, from Mexico, 1963, last week). In this one, from 1969, sent from Berkeley, CA, we l...
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Timothy Leary to Allen Ginsberg, May 8, 1963 – Letter from Mexico
Dr. Timothy Leary
Editor's Note: Well, sometimes we find the darndest things in our PO Box—we just received a package, with the return address "Dr. Tim Leary, Orange Sunshine Street, The Other Side of this Life," containing three (apparentl...
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Poem
Classical Music Lover
Ron Kolm
Classical Music Lover
I was sitting behind the cash register
In Eastside Bookstore
On a warm summer afternoon
In June, 1976.
The evening junkie group nod
Hadn’t started yet,
But they would eventually
Shuffle in...
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Poem
The Meaning of Existence
Phillip Giambri
The Meaning of Existence
Two grungy old winos
with damaged faces,
sitting on the window ledge
of the vitamin store
on First Ave @ 14th
sharing a bottle in a bag,
bummin’ smokes from passersby,
and discussing
...
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Poem
Puzzles Partly, He Shoe
Jim Leftwich
Puzzles Partly, He Shoe
Moments falsify no aspect of talisman or tale. Nor talus as source of value, nor described by the book in uncharted enchantment, entire hand-picked shifting presents, p resents, pre sents, shriek s...
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Poem
The Last Time I Met Allen Ginsberg
Tom Savage
The Last Time I Met Allen Ginsberg
I was walking through Tompkins Square Park
About two years after the brain surgery
From which I was still recovering.
I saw Allen.
He came toward me.
He touched me in the center of ...
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