Poem
Fake Lies
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
FAKE LIES
The donor class is warping the loom.
Domination is damnation.
Defiance is a shortcut to de-finance.
We have to scrap for all that’s left.
Make of your suffering, charms.
The best things are free (like me...
More...
Poem
Wallace Stevens Loses His Job
William Considine
Moment in flux: Tuesday, February 8, 1916.
Place in passing: 55 Liberty Street, Manhattan, New York City:
a new tower, the Liberty Nassau Building,
Liberty Tower, first called the Bryant Building for
William Cullen Bryan...
More...
Poem
Hells Kitchen
Ron Kolm
Hells Kitchen
After the war in Vietnam
Wound down, and my stint
Doing alternative service
Came to an end,
I had to stop
And take stock
Of my situation.
I could return to Pennsylvania
And get a job in a factory
D...
More...
Poem
6 PM ON THE BQE
Joel Allegretti
6 PM ON THE BQE
Waiting to exit,
a dozen cars deep,
I glance out
the driver-side
window and,
beyond six over-
worked lanes,
behold rolling
gray acres of
gravestones.
As the minutes
perish and blow
across ...
More...
Poem
There is No Brooklyn Bound F Service
Jennifer Juneau
There is No Brooklyn Bound F Service
no F trains from this station, the sign says
at 42nd street & sixth avenue (where you spent your day)
to get to the lower east side (where you’ll spend your night)
you must take t...
More...
Writing
Confessions of a Wind-Up Doll (True Burlesque)
Peter Marra
Confessions of a Wind-Up Doll
(True Burlesque)
There is always beauty in the hissing sounds.
The alternating camera speeds reveal a long-lashed woman;
touching experimental films, she has a forceful birth
to destroy ...
More...
Writing
The Trumpeters
Michael Rothenberg
The Trumpeters
Cowards in white sheets, the skinhead cops
and racists, the religious working men
and women who think a woman’s place is
in the kitchen and children are to be seen
and not heard, and believe people of...
More...
Poem
For Bob Marley and other poems
Tsaurah Litzky
For Bob Marley
I grind the beans for my morning coffee,
organic fair trade beans from Trader Joe’s
in the electric coffee grinder
my father gave me so long ago,
the smell of happiness fills my kitchen,
th...
More...
Poem
No One’s Beat Samsara and Other Poems
Peter Marti
No One’s Beat Samsara
You just can’t win vs. that Wheel of Birth & Death
when you have women, mojo and looks, something else
will be missing—your teeth haven't all been accounted for and now
an ex is asking for ...
More...
Poem
This Cat Is Now My Cat & other poems
Craig Kite
This Cat Is Now My Cat
I hope that my girlfriend doesn't come back tonight.
In fact, I hope my girlfriend never comes back.
I hope that her cat becomes my cat.
It basically already is.
I fucking love this cat.
Thi...
More...
Poem
Three Poems by Eve Packer
Eve Packer
in the realm of
i was heading west
from ave b between 1st & 2nd,
a storefront opposite
the Gas Station, to do the errand
i had been asked, i was
heading to e. 3rd between
1st & 2nd, to a building
where dave burrell...
More...
Poem
Two Poems About the Village
Arthur Nersesian
EAST VILLAGE REMAINS
Last night
in East Village
the garbage was tossed out
only to wash ashore
along 2nd Avenue
resold by peddlers,
bought by the hopeless few
who see a nostalgia,
a bargain, who take it home
try ...
More...
Poem
Perfect
Sarah Bernstein
Perfect
Precise line
Formed
On top of
Precise line
Invisibly
Perfect
Excel at
Gluing at
Handwriting at
Removing
Splinters
Cutting
Bangs
Perfect
Feeling
Walk on
Hot sand
Hand on
Stove
Fingers in
Oil
Boil...
More...
Classics
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
—1—
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge ...
More...