Meaning of the Dance
Mark McCawley
Fortunately, not everyone has to experience the daily life of madness and insanity of a spouse with a severe mental illness. It's akin to watching a portrait you adore manifest into something you no longer know or even recog...
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The Stabbing Game
Sean Flaherty
They switched the time of day
but every day for one year,
Monday through Friday
we had seventh grade science
with Mr. Stern,
after school,
Neil Brown and I
would tear over to Friendly’s or
Burger King
in his mom’s Camar...
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Essay
In-depth observations on eye floaters – a challenge to ophthalmology
Floco Tausin
For centuries, scholars try to find an explanation for the mobile, scattered and transparent spheres and strings in our visual field. Early on in ophthalmological tradition, the origin was thought to be in the eye. The pheno...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #16: Books – Increasingly Illegal Intoxicants?
bart plantenga
An interview with Karen Lillis
When I was just beginning high school I was one scared, miffed, gawky, pimply kid, unlike the rest of the kids somehow. But what kid of 13 didn’t feel that way? (photo: Karen in the ...
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Essay
Barefoot in the Heart
Keshav Das
"Drugs," an excerpt from Barefoot in the Heart
“Muktananda, Shirdi Sai Baba and Hari Das Baba would never take LSD.”
A certain pattern had evolved wherein Maharajji frequently called upon myself and a couple of oth...
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Essay
Online Magazines Versus Status Quo
Mark McCawley
The dilemma with writing anything edgy or transgressive in Canada, isn't that it is all too often written from the margins, or by choice or circumstance — it comes down to the harsh reality that edgy, transgressive writing...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #15: Beer as Therapy
bart plantenga
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners
• Albert Camus
You gotta chortle in your beerhead at the maxim “Beer Is Cheaper Than Therapy,” a tongue-in-cheek saying fraught [...
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Essay
Original Beats: Gregory Corso and Herbert Huncke
City of Strangers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbY6KXPg6wY&feature=player_embedded
Often overshadowed by the Beat triumvurate of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac, Herbert Huncke and Gregory Corso were nonetheless integral to the Beat f...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #14: Beer = Food = Books
bart plantenga
Apparently I said “In NY the louder and crazier you sound, the more attention you seem to get,” and this was quoted in the Sunday Boston Globe about our Cambridge gig. Luckily they used a photo of Judy Nylon and not me. ...
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Subway Pome #57: Most Girls Wear Too Much Makeup
Sean Flaherty
“Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don’t need no other lover” – from Something by George Harrison
Around eight
Saturday morning
the chilly wet October fog
makes it feel earlier than it is,
the bus depot
...
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NEW
Dong of the Dead
Jose Padua
The name of this poem is Dong of the Dead.
It is my attempt to cash in quickly
on the literary zombie craze by
writing the first literary zombie
porn novel in verse. I am writing it
while sitting in the back of a pickup
...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #13: Without the Voodoo of Hope
bart plantenga
Hitching through mid-1970s Canada usually meant Canadian Border Services stopping you, inquiring how much money you had on your person. If it was under $25 they’d refuse you entry, which meant hitching the long way round ...
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Poem
Twenty-Four Islands
Marguerite Van Cook
Island No 1
This island is inhabited by turtles,
Flowering shrubs linger past the drift stalks
Seashells flock the debris
This is the island where I forgot my sweater
That summer my breasts began to grow
The beach even...
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Poem
How They Fucked (In Three Parts)
John S. Hall
I
Well, yes, they fucked like bunnies, and yes, they fucked as if it was their last night on earth (when in fact it was early afternoon), but more than that, they fucked like so many, different other things completely.
The...
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Story
Mt. Eden 1978-82
Drew Hubner
It started in a pool hall. Juan Colon had a girl friend, and so did the cop, Jimmy O’Donnelly. The problem was it was the same girl. Usually a policeman is issued whatever number comes up, but special requests can be made....
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