Essay
The Extremist Manifesto
Nick Zedd
Now that contemporary art, a system that stands for privilege, nepotism and political connections is finally dying, get out of the fucking way.
We who have been locked out of your galleries, museums and art holes... ignor...
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Poem
Time Now and Everything
Michael Randall
other nights I’ve heard it
just outside the window
fluttering in the dark, waiting
now I’m not convinced
the heart fails the spirit
sputters
all voices silent then choral music
on the radio quiet at first
b...
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Classics
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
Chapter One
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
His father told him t...
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Essay
Memory is Narrative; Narrative is Memory
Ronald B. Richardson
Memory is Narrative
Memory is mostly narrative. I say mostly because there are rare memories that are not, such as olfactory memories: you smell something, and it suddenly takes you back to . . . what? In these memories, ...
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Story
Purple Heron of the Night
Raúl Serrano Sánchez
Claudio was only trying to make up for all the years he’d spent yearning for those legs, the ones he was always telling you about over coffee in the newly restored center of the old city, in one of those bars that’s supp...
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Poem
The Good Shit & Presence: Rue Girardon
Pete Simonelli
The Good Shit
We were told the bubbles should look like little pebbles you could pour clean into your hand.
“Go on, shake it,”
said Peanut, junk dealer, mechanic, and feral-cat wrangler by day,
shiner by night.
�...
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Story
The Cherub
E. A. Fow
On the way to rehearsal, Amy thought she saw something flit away. An afterimage lingered in her eye, pink and faintly glowing, but she couldn’t make out what it was. She didn’t think about it again until the next day, wh...
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Essay
Catastrophes
Breyten Breytenback
No, the universe remains dark. We are animals overcome by catastrophes . . . but I suddenly discovered that alienation, the exploitation of man by man, and malnourishment, will push into the background the metaphysical evil,...
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Story
Tenth Between Fear & Trembling
Max Blagg
We lived one floor up from a woodworking shop from which the tools had long since been stolen. It was on East Tenth Street, way over almost to the river, a view of the smokestacks of Con Edison’s 14th Street plant painted ...
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Essay
Maria Yudina
Jenny Wade
The Russian concert pianist Maria Veniaminovna Yudina, little known in the West, died this day, November 19, in 1970. She had a fervent cult following in the Soviet Union, partly because of her resistance to the establishme...
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Poem
Evil Polish Boners & Other Flarf Poems
Sharon Mesmer
Evil Polish Boners
I don’t know what it is about spandex suits for wrestling and rowing,
but they always seem to create the most evil Polish boners.
The Polish boner is a boner that the Polish boner team created
...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #20: Eddie Woods Has Been Around the Block – With & Without Tennessee
bart plantenga
“If Tennessee Williams doesn’t know what to do with his life, why should I worry?”
~ Eddie Woods, Tennessee Williams in Bangkok
Eddie Woods and I go back to October 1978. It was in Amsterdam at the Ins & Out...
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Essay
Saving Johannes
Eddie Woods
Johannes van Dam (1946-2013). Journalist, walking encyclopedia, and culinary writer extraordinaire. And one of my dearest Amsterdam friends since we first met in 1980, which was still early Ins & Outs Press days. Johannes, w...
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Story
Looking Back: Anxiety’s Greatest Hits
Patrick O'Neil
San Francisco, June 24, 1997
I’m in a dark, trash-filled alley between tall brick buildings. Two men stand in shadows. I can’t see their faces. I hand one of them money and he gives me a balloon of dope. I look up, th...
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Poem
The Hurricane
Ron Kolm
My Sister is a pastor
For a hospice
In New Jersey—
She’s part of a team
That drives up and down
The length of the state
Helping the dying die.
She spends her nights
In motels and keeps her files
In her car; her...
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