I have been confined in speech. I have been confined in thought. I have been confined in hope… And even happiness, Within my far set nest. And I have been unleashed –Like the Big Bang –And the eternal twang! I have seen a world –Yes… live within one thought. I have tasted exotic fruits –That were all but bruised… What jewels(!) and fools(!) Someone lend – a … Continue reading I have been confined by O’ar Pali
While nubile gays of the present dance blithely to the tune of Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me,” they would do well to look to a “granddad” of yore: Larry Kramer. As one of the gay community’s most underrated writers considering his breadth of work, his death will perhaps bring him back to the forefront of study (move over, Jean Genet and Arthur … Continue reading Larry Kramer: The Homo Rogue Who Outraged the Gay Community By Telling It Like It Was (And Is)
My hair sweats in the hot weather;I think there’s something to be saidThat somehow I can be made hotterBy the thin hair on my head. I’d like to be able to take a walkAnd not break out in a sweatWhich drips out of the folliclesLike a bleeding paper cut. The wound is small, but still the goreDistills somewhat profuselyFor apparently it doesn’t takeA lot to … Continue reading Hélas by Zeke Greenwald
Waiting for the gradual process of “deconfinement” to occur, the polarizing French writer, Michel Houellebecq (a more hardcore enfant terrible of literature in terms of his unapologetic “white male” opinions than Bret Easton Ellis), at last decided to weigh in on the matter. The matter in particular being many people’s belief that as the world emerges slowly but surely after coronavirus, it will be an … Continue reading Michel Houellebecq As-t-il Raison? Cette pandémie ne change rien? Enfin, probablement.
Everything has to startsomewhere but a poemabout everything shouldnot start anywhere per sein media res is better andbest of all is no place atall a poem about everything has no truck withhierarchy or diachronicprogression and makesnonsense of the notionof non sequitur after allas soon as two thingsfollow each other theysequence and segue andapophenia is more thanjust a pretty word poemsabout everything do notexist in the … Continue reading A Poem About Everything by Rufo Quintavalle
Despite the usage of “le” COVID-19 or “le” coronavirus in French conversation and news headlines ever since the plague became such a hot topic of discussion, the Académie française, never an institution to stay silent for very long when the French get too “buck wild” with their parlance, has spoken. And what they’ve said is this: the virus that everyone hates and has ruined all … Continue reading Quelle Surprise: COVID-19 Slapped With Feminine Pronoun by Académie française
You’d be surprised how many people talk to goldfish. He looked like a young David Bowie,her kid Jimmy, when he came and sat beside my bowl. “You know I’m an addict,”he told me. He talked to me the whole time he spread out his paraphernalia—needle, cotton balls,one of the Old Shoe’s bestsilver-plate spoons. He tied off his arm and flicked a vein to pop it to the surface, addeda few … Continue reading Free of Pretense by Dale Champlin
I am a child, Ambrose. Today I celebrate my birthduring a pandemic. In my conical party hatI unwrap birthday presentsthough I did not ask, no one asks to be born. I did not choose to be marooned in my childhood homeother men strip of wood rotand reframe, repaint, after their own image. After theyhave finished, it will be as if I were never born. But OK, I’m sometimes OK with that. How many worlds … Continue reading Stay-at-Home Order by Cameron Morse
Alaska, already markedly lacking in being acknowledged (so much so that people still seem to think that Texas is the largest state) despite its storied history of having among the highest suicide rates in the U.S. and being sold for the price of a song (7.2 million dollars) by the Russians in 1912, has managed to re-register on people’s radar after a recent and rather … Continue reading The Sarah Palins Will Keep Coming: On the Banning of Certain Classic Literature in Alaska
Gold coins on the counter, a single rolled cigarette, an open till. Outside, the sky looks like a clean, well swept room. There’s a spider crawling out of the clerk’s cherry slurpee, its long, spindly legs gripping the tip of the cup. The clerk smacks her gum then tilts the cup on its side, shakes it like a frappé, until the spider can’t hold on … Continue reading Work of Art by Sherri Levine
