Story
Afro-Surreal Excerpt
D. Scot Miller
Let me tell you how I met Sham Black.
West Virginia, Dunbar Jr. High School football field, 123rd Annual Commode Bowl, Riverside Rats versus The Hillside Rams.
photograph by Kym Ghee
Every Thanksgiving morning...
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Story
The Year of Our Lord Quetzalcoatl
Margarita Shalina
The morning of the first day in the Dark Zone, I wake, still dreaming in black and white. I am Joan Crawford. I am Mildred Pierce. In the black of night, a storm is raging. I am in a bungalow by the ocean. The white foam wav...
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Story
The Earring
Alan Kaufman
I first saw the gold crescent of renegade freedom dangling from the lobe of a nameless hairy hippy Goy, his scrawny, insolent neck bound by a red bandanna. He leaned with outthrust hip of impertinent American coolness agains...
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Evergreen
Ballad of a Lousy Husband
Joshua Mohr
I should probably tell you more about the night Blue pushed me off the bar because that was really when our marriage ended. Sure, we stayed together another nine, twelve, maybe fifteen months more, but nothing was ever goo...
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Story
Caravaggio, Baby
Deborah Pintonelli
I have a date with Henry Henderson. We worked together one long summer canvassing for Greenpeace. Yes, I was one of those annoying young people who stop you on the street when you are rushing to your next appointment. He was...
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Story
1971
Celia Farber
Anyway I had a goldfish, a common Woolworth’s goldfish, which I brought home in a water filled plastic bag, and somebody, a man named Rick, I think, who worked for my father, said it would be safe to place him in a concret...
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Story
Gladyss of the Hunt
Arthur Nersesian
“Gladyss! Turn on the TV, quick!”
“Hold on!” I muttered, having just been awakened from a sound sleep.
Assuming it had something to do with my murder case, which my brother knew I was assigned to, I pu...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 13
Drew Hubner
When I awoke at dawn Gene Clark was driving and humming to himself.
We’re going to take a side trip to see the folks, he said and then we have a show at Wayne State in Detroit.
The car broke down; it would not go ove...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 12
Drew Hubner
photograph by Ted Barron
A true Operatic, Gene Clark could have sung stage, and his natural style was that of the Elizabethan ballad, songs that he had traded verses with his father since a bare lad. He learned to keep ...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 11
Drew Hubner
That night in the dark van, as the stark winter night trees made shadows on the old winding and cracked highway, Gene told us of how writing songs and singing them, sometimes performing even made him feel something like he d...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 10
Drew Hubner
When I awoke at dawn Gene Clark was driving and humming to himself.
We’re going to take a side trip to see the folks, he said and then we have a show at Wayne State in Detroit.
The car broke down; it would not go ove...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 9
Drew Hubner
Roger White showed up in Champaign on his motorcycle, a good thing. Gene played all the new songs in a semi-fugue state. Like he was all alone up there, singing, testifying before God.
photograph by Ted Barron
Gene s...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 8
Drew Hubner
For the rest of the show, Gene Clark pitched in with the others. They just had their guitars and used whatever PA was available. They sang to one mike like some old fashioned country round up.
They had to go back to their...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 7
Drew Hubner
Gene Clark released his first solo album more than a year and a half after Eight Miles High. He recorded it with some of LA’s best session musicians including Leon Russell, Glen Campbell and Clarence White, all of whom we...
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Story
Tambourine Man: Gene Clark – Part 6
Drew Hubner
We got our tickets, went up the escalator to find our platform. The buses were so behind by now, getting dark outside as 4:30 turned to six pm. I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Never has a room smelled as bad as th...
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