Two Poems by Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
AFTER YOU SAID I ALWAYS LOSE THINGS
The red birthstone fell
out of my ring, leaving
its crowned prongs empty,
a perfect chip chiseled
from my heart’s bones.
I dreamed being stopped by
the long dark walkway
w...
Vladislav Khodasevich: Midlife Meltdown in Paris
Jenny Wade
During the unusually hot Parisian summer of 1924, 38-year-old Vladislav Khodasevich—regarded by Nabokov as the finest Russian poet since Blok—was suffering from an identity crisis. One of 3 million exiled from Soviet Rus...
The Earring
Alan Kaufman
I first saw the gold crescent of renegade freedom dangling from the lobe of a nameless hairy hippy Goy, his scrawny, insolent neck bound by a red bandanna. He leaned with outthrust hip of impertinent American coolness agains...
Ballad of a Lousy Husband
Joshua Mohr
I should probably tell you more about the night Blue pushed me off the bar because that was really when our marriage ended. Sure, we stayed together another nine, twelve, maybe fifteen months more, but nothing was ever goo...
The World of Wrestling
Roland Barthes
The grandiloquent truth of gestures
on life's great occasions.
--Baudelaire
The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient th...
Caravaggio, Baby
Deborah Pintonelli
I have a date with Henry Henderson. We worked together one long summer canvassing for Greenpeace. Yes, I was one of those annoying young people who stop you on the street when you are rushing to your next appointment. He was...
Silent Calls: Short Poems from Sparrow
Sparrow
Silent Calls
You know how sometimes the phone rings and when you answer it no one’s there? Many of those calls are made by cats.
Science Virgin
“I’m a science virgin,” said Adele. “I’ve n...
1971
Celia Farber
Anyway I had a goldfish, a common Woolworth’s goldfish, which I brought home in a water filled plastic bag, and somebody, a man named Rick, I think, who worked for my father, said it would be safe to place him in a concret...
Gladyss of the Hunt
Arthur Nersesian
“Gladyss! Turn on the TV, quick!”
“Hold on!” I muttered, having just been awakened from a sound sleep.
Assuming it had something to do with my murder case, which my brother knew I was assigned to, I pu...
You Can Win: An Interview with Díre McCain
Edward S. Robinson
Díre McCain is a survivor. Editor in Chief at the internationally-renowned Paraphilia Magazine, which has, since its inception in 2009, built a reputation for writing and art of outstanding quality while existing far beyond...
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 13
Drew Hubner
When I awoke at dawn Gene Clark was driving and humming to himself.
We’re going to take a side trip to see the folks, he said and then we have a show at Wayne State in Detroit.
The car broke down; it would not go ove...
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 12
Drew Hubner
photograph by Ted Barron
A true Operatic, Gene Clark could have sung stage, and his natural style was that of the Elizabethan ballad, songs that he had traded verses with his father since a bare lad. He learned to keep ...
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 11
Drew Hubner
That night in the dark van, as the stark winter night trees made shadows on the old winding and cracked highway, Gene told us of how writing songs and singing them, sometimes performing even made him feel something like he d...
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 10
Drew Hubner
When I awoke at dawn Gene Clark was driving and humming to himself.
We’re going to take a side trip to see the folks, he said and then we have a show at Wayne State in Detroit.
The car broke down; it would not go ove...
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 9
Drew Hubner
Roger White showed up in Champaign on his motorcycle, a good thing. Gene played all the new songs in a semi-fugue state. Like he was all alone up there, singing, testifying before God.
photograph by Ted Barron
Gene s...
