Vacation
Sean Flaherty
Vacation
It was a hot, long, necessary three days:
my wife was eight months pregnant
and the pressure was on at work
but I had to leave that behind –
more than a year had gone by
and I hadn’t visited my mother
...
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Rich
Michael Aanavi
I’m an old time smugglin’ man,
I know just what to do.
I sell guns to the Arabs,
I sell dynamite to the Jews.
—Tim Hardin
I first met Rich soon after he and my mother started seeing each other. My mother had come f...
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What I Did Today, Part III
Ron Kolm
If you’ve been following this series of posts, you’ll remember that there are four 2,000 word “essays” in each What I Did Today chapbook, and that Dan Waber is the publisher, and that if you want a copy you have to c...
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NEW
don't read this
D. Scot Miller
friday night, i'm
in an underwater
ballet kind of mood like when
you're a kid at the swimming pool, you sink beneath the surface of the water
and pretend you can do everything the water can
&
i see
becky anderson la...
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Interview
Philip Quinn — Outrageous But Beautiful
Mark McCawley
Whenever anyone asks me who my top transgressive Canadian writers happen to be, Philip Quinn is always at the top of that list. Hamilton-born, Quinn's writing takes the familiar and makes it strange; then takes the strange a...
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Essay
Fake Shemp vs. Real Shemp
Sir Andre Bemler
The Real Shemp
Born Samuel Horwitz, he was nicknamed Shemp because that's what Sam sounded like with his mother's thick Latvian accent. He was one of the original 3 Stooges on vaudeville, along with his younger brothe...
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Subway Pome #56: Marcy
Sean Flaherty
On Marcy Avenue,
beneath
the above-ground
subway platform
for
the Jay, eM, Zee
a
teenage girl
bounces her
very large
breasts
in
barely a bra
beneath
an
orange T-shirt
a size
too small,
at Havemeyer,
she stops
and bounces on...
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Essay
A Life of Uncontrollable Urges (or Tourette’s and the Writing Life)
Jose Padua
On a recent Sunday afternoon, as I pushed a cart in the aisle between the checkout counters and the racks of men’s shirts at Walmart, the song that went though my head was Brian Eno’s “Here Come the Warm Jets.” Eve...
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What I Did Today, Part II
Ron Kolm
It’s been a week or two since I posted the first of four essays from Dan Waber’s What I Did Today Chapbook series (published by chapbookpublisher.com but, as it turns out, not available from them – to get a copy you ha...
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My Grandfather, Nobility, and Sour Cream
Michael Aanavi
Whatever you end up doing, love it. The way you loved the projection booth when you were a little squirt.
—Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso
My mother used to tell me we were descended from Russian princes, that I was royalty...
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Art
Matt and Mark Enger’s “Streets of Glory” at Christopher Henry Gallery.
Marguerite Van Cook
I first met the identical Enger twins, Mark and Matt at the well-known artist’s bar Max Fish, on the Lower East Side of New York. They were wearing civil war dress that shocked the Northern sensibility, but their rebelliou...
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Essay
Matthew Firth — My Kinda Suburban Pornographer
Mark McCawley
"A guided tour through an urban menagerie peopled by society's outcasts, truants, and misfits -- adrift in a sea of humanity, putting in time, but cursed from the start. Their only solace found in booze, casual sex, myster...
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Literary Outlaws, Bad Asses & Underground Writers
Mark McCawley
“…true Unbearables realize that there is nothing to sell out other than that
overstocked warehouse of lost dreams we’ve all been carrying on
our backs for so long they’ve taken on the aura of that immortal
5000-po...
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Essay
BEER MYSTIC Burp #9: Beernuts are People Too
bart plantenga
You can make a lot of friends on social networks if you’re into beer. You can do that quite adequately in bars as well. You buy a few elbow jockeys a round of canned goat urine and you might have friends for life, the kind...
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NEW
Lean on Me
Jose Padua
Back then sausage, eggs, hash browns, and toast cost
under three dollars for br...
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