Having an American passport is like having your heart ripped out while being unable to go to the doctor. My Mexican hands are still brown in Europe. I just did Portugal, Italy, Hungary and now Greece in three months. Hopefully they won’t take my heart and soul by this age of thirty. I tell SFSU Professor Alejandro Murguía to drive me to downtown San Francisco. … Continue reading It’s Always About a Dollar (Euro) by Francisco Orozco
1. Our relationship has always been propelled forward by apocalypse. After declining his house key many times (let me fuck you with a strap-on, then we can talk about moving in together) the coronavirus has propelled us into a living together experiment. It’s Friday the thirteenth. If there was one person I wanted to be in quarantine with, it was him. Him, with his smug … Continue reading The Corona Honeymoon, Pt. 1 by Elles Rebelles
The pure contralto sings in the organ loftTo the pilgrims and agnostics queuing upTo touch the sacred rock with the powerThey say, to heal ailments: grippe; autism;The body flux; mumps; shingles; sterility;Tennis elbow; wrist, shoulder or Achilles Tendinitis; lazy eye; leprosy; atrial flutter;Tachycardia; pentosuria; benign essentialTremor; renal calculi; Mad Cow Disease;Tourette and Townes-Brocks syndrome;Hyperglycemia; gangrene and cherubism.The prayer or the hope of all is the … Continue reading Shelf 15 by Rufo Quintavalle
What he really isIs a middle-aged guyWearing camo,Who reads a lot of booksOn military history and dreamsWhat the World would be likeIf Hitler had won the war.He sits in a neighborhood bar,Hunched over a White Russian,Watching TV.Every time he looksAt the screenSomething happens:Tornadoes slap Tennessee,Coronavirus erupts in China,Trump opens his mouth.He nods sagelyAnd sips his drinkAs these disasters occurIn real time.Even as he staresAt his … Continue reading Death Is A Soldier by Ron Kolm
Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments… — William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 116” The unconscious lays its cardswith impediment from you;impetus of id, its sole objective;and, when it deals, does, no doubt,off the bottom of the deck. The bottom of the sea is where we’re bound;ship sinking meanwhile, run aground …Captain! O Captain! you mutter, guzzling salt straight out of the packet ―who replies … Continue reading Ode to a Shrinking Head by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper
It’s early morning, I hear an owl;I heard that owl a night agoWhen a strahl of orange street lamps wereA brass band for a single owl tone. That’s when I went to sleep, and likeOther people I was in bed;I did as others for a night,But I’m an unfellowed kind of man. I heard the owl this morning for Last night I didn’t get to sleep.Once … Continue reading Hooters by Zeke Greenwald
A prayer nowfor the babyfucked to deathnear Coos Bay. A prayer for the guy who did it.Three for the cops who accidentally beat him on his way to the car. Three more, now, one for thegirlfriend, two for the wives,who held the big men in theirarms when they cried. Four prayers for the EMTs wholifted the small body withshaking hands. One each fortheir two hearts, two to slide in their … Continue reading How It Spreads by Tiffany Lee Brown
While the times are inarguably grim, and dystopian literature suddenly seems all too real, the strange relevance of one of The Opiate Books’ first published works on the imprint, The PornME Trinity, is perhaps a more cautionary tale than ever as we move into forced self-quarantine. Below we discuss everything from the genesis of the project to the advent of coronavirus fetish porn. The Opiate: … Continue reading The PornME Trinity Interview With David Leo Rice
It is in the sixth grade that we are assigned to read O.T. Nelson’s The Girl Who Owned A City (perhaps merely an anomalous part of the reading curriculum in California). Because kids have a tendency to go along with most everything adults say at that age, it doesn’t come across as entirely strange or disturbing to be reading a dystopian YA novel about a … Continue reading The 70s Got the “Virus Apocalypse” Right With The Girl Who Owned A City
New York, the place everyone still deems as a gumption-filled milieu where we’re all free to be you and me, so long as it doesn’t step on the wrong “tastemaker’s” toes or offend the wrong victim’s (a.k.a. someone with clout/public visibility) sensibilities. Let us get this straight: this isn’t merely about Woody Allen. About whether one “supports” him or not. Or whether one “believes” him … Continue reading New York Is A Spineless Place, Which Is Why It Has Publishing Companies to Match: On Hachette & Woody Allen
