Story
Pop-Tarts
Lee Varon
The bar is small with a low black ceiling and a cement floor lit by red lightbulbs. “I Fall to Pieces” plays as she walks in.
He wears a black T-shirt with a picture of a gold toad on it and the word “TOAD” in g...
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Story
Oh Shit
Ben Roth
This is the story of how a bookstore briefly became a shrine. But it doesn’t go the way you think. Listen and wonder at the tale I have to tell.
Nothing in this world had prepared him for what he found that afternoon ...
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Story
Peckerwood Blues
Ray Jicha
My cousin Jubal kicked me out after a week and I had to hitchhike back to Carolina to face Mama, hat in hand. It took me all day to get up to Shreveport, but then I caught a break. A rusty Datsun pickup rolled up and I threw...
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Story
The Methadonians
Nelson Loskamp
I sat every day perched high above the northeast corner of Canal and Allen in my painting studio in New York, mostly not painting. Down below was a tree-lined stretch of median called the Allen Malls. Worn by the wind, weath...
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Story
Nobody Reads Mailer Anymore
Frank Richards
Things were different in those days. Back in the nineties, my international business meetings were face-to-face rather than screen-to-screen. I spent a lot of time in the air. Sometimes I felt like one of those big sea birds...
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Story
We Come, We Go
Lenny Levine
“Thank you, New York!”
Justin Howitzer stood bathed in spotlights, his right fist raised aloft, his left hand idly tracing patterns on the fingerboard of his Stratocaster, as if impatient to begin the last song of t...
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Story
Anarchy At The Circle K – excerpt
Patrick O'Neil
ANARCHY AT THE CIRCLE K
On the road with Dead Kennedys, TSOL, Flipper, Subhumans and...HEROIN
A memoir by Patrick O'Neil
Punk Hostage Press, 2022
By 10pm I’ve yet to meet anyone that says they’re in charge. I had t...
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Story
The Slop
J. Boyett
He spat his toothpaste into the sink, rinsed his mouth, then as he straightened saw himself in the mirror and froze. Yesterday he’d been in a public bathroom with mirrors mounted on all the walls, which had given him the c...
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Story
Darth Trip
Marc Olmsted
“New York is a head without a body. California is a body without a head.” - Vincent Zangrillo
“You sound like a cowboy, only intelligent.” - Vinny’s friend to me
Return of the Jedi wasn’t really any go...
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Story
Christmas in the Heart of Dixie
Patrick O'Neil
It’s hard to find a vein when you’re driving. It’s even harder to find a vein when you no longer have any. Shit, my veins used to stand out like well-torqued E strings. I could just feel around with my fingers. You kno...
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Story
Parisian Literary Imposter
bart plantenga
Luke discovered Sophie’s latest map, “LUKE’S BRAIN – XXX DESIRES & FANTASYS & BEAUCOUP DE RIEN,” taped to the perfectly fine desklamp he’d rescued from the street. Sophie hated that lamp, the kink in its aluminum...
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Story
Togetherness
J. Boyett
On Christmas morning of 2020, in Morrilton, Arkansas, enough hatred was exerted in the living room of David and Nancy Dunbar, and in a focused enough manner, to raise a Krzllgian Fleshbeast and zap the whole family into its ...
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Story
Autobiography
Ron Riekki
I joined the Air Force to get money for a film that was shooting in Los Angeles. I had already been in the U.S. Marines and am the only Marine in the history of the Marines to hate the Marines. Or to be brave enough to say...
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Story
Sugar Foot
David Simmons
Chauncey liked to freebase smack with the foil positioned so that the shiny side was up. What he hoped to gain from this was self-induced Alzheimer’s. It came from burning the aluminum.
Chauncey said, “I don’t wanna...
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Story
Dahmer, Dolphy & Me
Daniel A. Brown
“Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”
– Job (5:7)
I had never killed or cannibalized a woman but I did fear that I might be turning into a serial killer.This was 1992, a few years after Ted Bun...
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