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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Poem
Rubble
Gregory Kolm
You thought this would be ground zero,
the birthplace of the upcoming revolution,
but nobody read the emails you sent,
or the magazines you handed out, or
tried to understand the class warfare that
you spoke about so hu...
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Review
The Menace of the Minotaur – a review of David Harrison Horton’s MAZE POEMS
John Greiner
MAZE POEMS
David Harrison Horton
Arteidolia Press
Daedalus, with his genius, was barely able to escape from the labyrinth of his own creation which was built to contain the Minotaur. Theseus, with the aid of Ariadne and her ball of twine was able to defeat the Minotaur and free the Athenians from the Cretian sacrifice of their young men and women in the labyrinth. David Harrison Horton, in his most recent book MAZE POEMS, has made use of Daedalus’s labyrinth, Theseus’s cleverness and Ariadne's practical skill to take on the Minotaur of language.
Language has taken on monstrous proportions in our modern era being used to propagate misinformation in the political realm. In contemporary culture language has too often taken on the lumbering weight of a didacticism that longs for fulfillment in the advent of a social realist hierarchy in a Year Zero horror utopia. Mr. Horton in MAZE POEMS has achieved the admirable end ...
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Poem
Endurance & 5 more poems by Marc Vincenz
Marc Vincenz
Endurance
The expiration of the empire, the incumbent flags of endurance. His lordship writes to you out of concern for your personal welfare. A case in point is said to be in the context of art; a failure for an immured go...
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Story
Oh Shit
Ben Roth
This is the story of how a bookstore briefly became a shrine. But it doesn’t go the way you think. Listen and wonder at the tale I have to tell.
Nothing in this world had prepared him for what he found that afternoon ...
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Poem
Fruit and other poems
Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
FRUIT
In this season of persimmons and pears
when things turn quickly and just go,
I mourn the almost being, as much as the done.
You, like the animal who shows me his beautiful teeth—
but then you, who slinks away...
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Poem
Penis Extensions
Ron Kolm
Warfare has always been
About extending your will
Further than your enemies.
Stones, spears and bows and arrows
Were all used in fornication.
Then crossbows, muskets,
Cannons and bombs were invented
To fuck with the m...
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Story
Peckerwood Blues
Ray Jicha
My cousin Jubal kicked me out after a week and I had to hitchhike back to Carolina to face Mama, hat in hand. It took me all day to get up to Shreveport, but then I caught a break. A rusty Datsun pickup rolled up and I threw...
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Poem
Olivia Wilde & other poems about women filmmakers
John S. Hall
Poem No. 1584 ("Olivia Wilde")
I'm going to see
The new Olivia Wilde movie
I don't give a shit
When people
Trash a movie
They have seen
Unless they have good reasons
And I care even less
When people
Trash a movie...
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