Story
"Li’l Punks", A Screenplay
Mark Netter
It's 1977 and four upstate-New York high school students who have formed their town's first punk rock band are in NYC together for the best night of their lives. They've been brought to NYC this particular Friday night b...
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Story
Pilgrims
City of Strangers
An excerpt from a novel
I met Dupont at the Bar X, a totally anonymous-looking place with tinted windows wedged in-between a McDonald’s and a pizzeria. I might never have noticed it had it not been for the neon Bud sign i...
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Essay
Unsupervised: My Life as a Bad Girl
Erika Schikel
I recently watched a “reality” show called “The Bad Girls Club” and was saddened to see what has lately become of the Bad Girl brand. The show devotes itself to a lot of scantily clad, cranky harlots who do nothing b...
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Story
Fat Wallet
Díre McCain
As luck would have it, Tecate Flats turned out to be a goldmine. Throughout the duration of my addiction, I had a fortuitous knack for attracting people—more specifically, men—who not only facilitated my habit, b...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #12: Stroh’s Cans to the Head
bart plantenga
I suddenly have vivid memories of survival in Flint, Michigan, Motor City Jr., birthplace of GM. I was a stranger here because I rode a bike with books of poetry in my back pocket and some locals could smell this alienness ...
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Where the Exiles Go — The Canadian Literary Outlaw in a Conformist Culture
Mark McCawley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkoByHco_Ig&feature=related
For as long as I've been writing and publishing in Canada, the concept of a Canadian Literary Outlaw has always been something of a contradiction. Not that ...
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What I Did Today, Carl Watson's Issue
Ron Kolm
After contributing to an earlier issue of What I Did Today, Carl Watson collected three two-thousand word essays to go along with his already published one, to complete his own follow-up issue. Here’s Michael Randall’s ...
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Sadie and Della
Michael Aanavi
"What do these children do without storybooks?" Naftali asked.
And Reb Zebulun replied: "They have to make do. Storybooks aren't bread. You can live without them."
I couldn't live without them." Naftali said.
—Isaac Bas...
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Essay
Beer Burp #11: Obsolete Drunken Nirvana
bart plantenga
Rich Dana, is not just the editor of the retro-future activist aesthetics journal Obsolete but also a guy doing battle – and making his own peace – with the various seemingly overwhelming forces of displacement, corpo...
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Library of Sean
Sean Flaherty
"We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal." - Tennessee Williams
I don’t loan books:
as a rule it removes the awkward event
of returning the book.
You begged to borrow it,
charmed me
with yo...
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Five years in Fleischmanns
Carl Watson
As some of you may or may not know, I have been trying to restore an old barn in the Catskills for several years. I had thought of writing funny little stories about my experiences but never produced anything. This year th...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #10: The Amble, The Ale
bart plantenga
The Amble, The Ale: Walking Nowhere Into the Pale
“Freedom knows no propaganda more effective
than people calmly enjoying themselves.”
• Raoul Vaneigm, The Revolution of Everyday Life
I was pointed to a youtu...
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A Rabelaisian Alphabet
Ron Kolm
Doing book reviews is not really my thing. Years ago I wrote some for Jeff Wright’s Cover magazine, and though it was a chance to tickle the keyboard, and probably gain a few brownie points with the folks I reviewed, it wa...
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Trans-Canada Highway
Mark McCawley
for Angelina
Let’s turn off the ignition
lock the doors and coast this curved
highway until we stop
watch snow which splatters
sperm-like across the car windshield
The air is chilled with crisp echoes
announcing jazz and...
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