The Bucket O’ Crabs
Jill Rapaport
I was scrunched up tight against Mike and Elvin; we made a gaping trinity off the noses of which Esmee purveyed her shining but misguided Wagnerian fantasies. Her father, like the fathers of more socially assured characters,...
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The Collector
Ron Kolm
I’m a collector. I hunt down runs of literary magazines and signed first editions of tricky prose, and place them in university library archives. I collect comic books and the Jokers from decks of playing cards. I also ...
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Poem
Rear Window 1, 2 & 3
steve dalachinsky
rear window 1
she’s in her underwear
she’s fixing the curtain
she just took a shower
she’s vacuuming the house
she’s talking on the phone
finally that stool is occupied
she smokes with her left hand
while d...
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Story
Rabbit and Crow
Norman Douglas
Rabbit and Crow watched as the sun came round over the field.
"Did you sleep well?" Rabbit asked Crow.
“I dreamed that I was running through the meadow,” said Crow.
“Ah,” said Rabbit.
Rabbit and Crow set ...
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Poem
Rose and other poems
Lyn Lifshin
ROSE
when it’s behind my knees
you’d have to fall to the
floor, lower your whole
body like horses in a field
to smell it. White Rose,
Bulgarian rose. I think of
sheets I’ve left my scent in
as if to stake a c...
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Poem
when the lights go out in Mojácar
Wanda Phipps
someone said “everyone who has power is smiling”
or was it “everyone who has electricity is smiling
or “everyone smiling has electricity”
definitely not “everyone smiling has powerful electricity”
or “eve...
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Story
Somerville
Melissa Febos
An excerpt from "The Savage Library"
I just knew that Somerville would be the kind of neighborhood to go all out at Christmas. I was right. Winter Hill in particular was an orgy of blinking lights and glowing plastic fig...
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Story
Manic Mode
Jonathan Shaw
An excerpt from "Narcisa"
“The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannizing.” -- Nietzsche
Carnaval was over. Weeks went by. The city of Rio de Janeiro was slowly goi...
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Story
Blue Portrait
Jennifer Adams
Matt was a blind date, the only one I ever went on. He was an acquaintance of a girl who had the locker next to mine senior year. She thought I’d like him because he was an artist and was sort of in a band. He played bass....
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Story
Knot Frum Hear
D. Scot Miller
My face is cold. A salty breeze numbing my cheeks. I have the black book in my lap, and a pen in my hand. Sunlight casts through black water, a murky aquamarine spreading its roots towards the edge of my boat. I’m awak...
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Classics
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
JG Ballard
(At the 1980 Republican Convention in San Francisco a copy of the Reagan text, minus its title and the running sideheads, and furnished with the seal of the Republican Party, was distributed by some puckish pro-situationists...
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NEW
MAYDAY, MAYDAY
Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
The white rain of petals that fell for a week is done.
What catches now in my hair
are the dried blossoms of the Callery Pear,
startling and crackly, as they float and scatter,
rattling through the trees to the street l...
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Writing
Crazy Mike
Mike DeCapite
an excerpt from RUINED FOR LIFE!
On a thick night in June I was waiting to hear from Luke and Crazy Mike. Kitty’d gone to bed, knowing it would be late if they showed up at all. I opened the fridge and stared at the pro...
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Story
Bully ’72
Michael Gonzales
It was the fall of 1972 when I transferred to St. Catherine of Genoa in Washington Heights. On the first day of class a bugged wild boy named Tom Lowe, a short cat skin the color of a Hershey bar and a perfect Afro, served a...
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Story
Chocolate Delight
Eddie Woods
Summer of 1980. I was again in New York for several days after a couple of weeks in San Francisco and before flying back to Amsterdam. One balmy evening I felt like a stroll along Eighth Avenue, up from Times Square and head...
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