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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Writing
On Receiving the Message, at 3:13 AM, on Tuesday, September 21, 2010, that Joe Schrank Has Confirmed me as a Friend on Facebook
John S. Hall
On Receiving the Message, at 3:13 AM, on Tuesday, September 21, 2010, that Joe Schrank Has Confirmed me as a Friend on Facebook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCoJGLyEVTw
1.
A wave of relief washes over me,
As i...
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Writing
It’s Not You. It’s Me.
Sean Flaherty
I put my daughter to bed,
kiss my wife
and take an easy walk
to get some groceries and a bag of beer,
at Driggs and North 8th
the ground gets hot
and the air smells like cinnamon:
across from the liquor store
a b...
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Story
Freeman Alley
Drew Hubner
An excerpt from East of Bowery by Drew Hubner and Ted Barron
Buy it on Amazon - $15.95
Also available in Kindle format - $9.95
The next morning I was awakened before dawn when a squad of SWAT cops in vests stepped into ...
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Music
Trans-Atlantic Soul
Stewart Home
When I was at school in the 1970s, the hip kids were obsessed with old soul records, and while I dug those sounds I never paid much attention to them telling me I should go to Wigan Casino for the soul all-nighters. ...
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Essay
The Sensitive Skin Magazine explained
The Editors
Two furry forest creatures grapple with the obscure dialectics of Sensitive Skin Magazine - who's right, furry forest man or furry forest woman? Who's to say, watch and decide for yourself...
NOTE: Somebody informed us la...
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Story
Daddy’s House: On Discovering Playboy
Michael A. Gonzales
Going to daddy's gaudy Harlem apartment every other weekend was one of the highlights of my childhood. Living in the heart of the hood, he worked as a full-time barber and part time hustler. A sawed off Puerto Rican who stoo...
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Story
A Meating of the Minds, or, Who Minds the Meat?
J. Boyett
My lover and I decided to stop using our bodies. Of course we had to keep using them—for things like breathing, eating, being alive—but we decided to stop using them when making love.
“Because isn't it a spiritual th...
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Story
The Evil Elves
Darius James
Clunkitty-clunkitty CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK!!!
This was not the clatter of the goat-hooved devil girls on the roof of the Froggie Family home.
Clunkitty-clunkitty CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK!!!
Nor the gentle patter of ballet-slippered...
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Poem
Communitas & other poems
Merry Fortune
Communitas
The birds are stars
The chick a body
A star there
plays the window of a lean limo,
crooning it's raining
From out is born
A way gone and never
Inside out threads love you there
and here while songs ...
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Poem
Conquistador
Michael Carter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb6lf3VMNIk
Copper-green pigeon-saluted
Statue of Balboa rusts quietly
In the bright California sun;
Balboa beach, or was it Coronado?
Conquistador blares from a car radio,
A yellow Do...
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Story
Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane
Stewart Home
was told the fastest route to Hell was by Metro. I took a train to South Hades. The local information map had Mount Olympus and numerous other mythological sites from the major world religions marked on it as being located ...
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