Essay
Letter From Santee
City Of Strangers
If we ever colonize Mars, our settlements will look a lot like Santee Town Center.
The heart of Santee, CA, on San Diego’s eastern edge, is a series of interlocking strip malls, the big box monster kind, abutted with...
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Billy Bang, R.I.P.
Bernard Meisler
Billy Bang, the great jazz violinist, moved on to the next plane, April 11, 2011.
When I first came to New York, in the early 80s, Bang was the man in the LES jazz scene. Bang was born in Alabama as Billy Walker, but as a...
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Essay
The Sensitive Skin Guide to Daikaiju Eiga (Japanese Giant Monster Movies)
Bernard Meisler
Oh no! There goes Tokyo!
-Blue Oyster Cult
Japan's problems seem to get worse every day. First the earthquake, then the tsunami, then Ernst Blofeld's secret volcano lair blew up again and to top it all off, a horrific ra...
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Essay
Dock Ellis and the LSD No-Hitter
Bernard Meisler
On June 12, 1970, Dock Ellis, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, accomplished what is perhaps the single greatest achievement in the history of sports - he pitched a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD. Apparently ...
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NEW
The Beer Mystic’s Last Day on the Planet
bart plantenga
previous Beer Mystic Excerpt #43: BLACK BILE PRESS [Ottowa]
Furman Pivo believes he [plus beer] may be the cause of a rash of streetlight outages. This sense of empowerment transforms him into the Beer Mystic. He has ...
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Essay
Words for My Mother’s Funeral
Robert C. Hardin
Her loveliness grew to encompass her gentleness as the span of Heaven is multiplied by the depth of its city of souls.
Leah Hardin was a woman who treasured her family above all else. Long after desire and ambition had be...
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Essay
Introduction to The Bricklyn Project
Tim Hall
Abstract: A funding proposal to photograph all the bricks in Brooklyn.
Introduction: Do you know many bricks were used to build your house, your neighborhood, your city? Does anybody know? If not, why not? These are some ...
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NEW
A Tale of an Affair
Carl Watson
An excerpt from Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming now available at Amazon
Sometimes the speed works for you. Sometimes you’re left behind. The latter is my usual state. It was the early 1980s, West Lakeview. Subtle ...
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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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