1. If you happen to be near hardwood floors, grass, or dirt, lay down there. Lay your body down. Breathe. Always remember to breathe. Call out the names of your ancestors while laying down. Close your eyes. Call out the names of your ancestors. Breathe. Think. Call out the names of your ancestors. Smell them, hear them, laugh with them, frolic. Be blessed as you … Continue reading I Was Drowning Then I Became Water by Khalil Anthony
If nothing happens, it is not a story… x I pour myself a glass of Campari and consider taking ice from the freezer, but don’t. Campari with ice is for good moments. Warm, bitter Campari is for moments like these, when you lost something important. I need a better distraction. x You left me over soup. Not because of it, but during it. While I … Continue reading Kafka and Campari by Christoffer Felix Wahlberg
After E.J. Bellocq circa 1912 (photograph of a Creole woman) My great-granddaughter doesn’t know this about me, but I’m the Creole lineage she comes from. I’m why she is drawn to New Orleans, French music, fromage. My chin is her grandmother’s chin. The Cubans didn’t take that away. When I was young, I learned to wear lace and sit in parlors so I would never … Continue reading Wait for Me by Marissa J. McCants
Fortune good or Fortune bad—the reason we Introduce ourselves to strangers in bars We desperately attempt to swing the pendulum of Fortune one way or the other just to get things moving We invite each other back to hotel rooms Drink champagne and kiss without knowing the names of the other one’s parents or that one is trained in classical piano while at the same … Continue reading Fortune (for Natalie) by Alex Feldman
Adam named the animals, As God the days of the week, And Man the Ages: Bronze, Steel, Plastic, Anthropocene; Machines, gasoline, drugs, cries; Implacable blood defaces the nameable; There’s no Deus Ex Machina for the animal. ______________________________________________________________________ Adam a nommé les animaux Comme Dieu les jours de la semaine Et l’Homme les Ages: Du Bronze, de l’Acier, du Plastique, de l’Anthropocène; Machines, pétrole, drogues, cris; … Continue reading Adam named the animals by Stuart Krusee
It’s a quiet Wednesday afternoon in late winter, and the dark water of a long lake is trapped beneath bright shimmering ice. Above it, thick gray clouds hang low, diffusing the sunlight across a frozen expanse that stretches out from shore a good three hundred feet, before giving way to dark open water that ripples when the sky sends down a chilly wind that rolls … Continue reading Lake Break by Christian Niedan
Reveals The Buddha nature of affection, I drank to enliven Tepid conversations, Defibrillate a connection, A time machine to the moments Under the jurisdiction of lust, The season of Skin upon skin, Fingers tracing lips, sucking Her scent from fingertips, Thrusts encapsulate base desires, While immature sexual proclivities, Dance, In a carnal garden of lust, Fueled by whiskey sours, ciders, And joints whose journey from … Continue reading Dating Without Alcohol by Donovan James
In 2006, the “anonymous” author (though many a passerby has bought his book from the man himself in SoHo) responsible for Diary of an Oxygen Thief was still marooned in Europe. The city of New York had not yet truly become bombarded by the marketing schemes that social media has made a part of our everyday existence. No, that wouldn’t come in its “true modern … Continue reading The True Revenge Story of Diary of an Oxygen Thief: Marketing, Not A Publisher is What Gets Readers Interested
As one of many underrated authors recently dredged up by the New York Review of Books, Arthur Schnitzler’s canon of work beyond Traumnovelle, best known for being Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation in the form of Eyes Wide Shut, is at last being acknowledged. With the release of Schnitzler’s novella Late Fame on the publisher’s imprint, modern readers are given a glimpse into a problem that has apparently plagued the … Continue reading Arthur Schnitzler’s Late Fame: An Exploration of Poseurdom
next to the Keats Shelley museum of literary manuscripts bacchanalia memoirs John’s death mask and bandages Byron wore through Italy into a Greek uprising history’s last stand of warrior king poets who once portrayed the persona in a careless bravado their breath on the page attracted what critics of leisure have ruminated about while literary egos straddle borders revolution foments Continue reading Modeling on the Spanish Steps by Michael Berton
