I cry between the lines, AI verse this will never be. I defy the artificial assembler of words to impersonate, to predict this in living color. Absent from its language database is the driving arousal, the hormonal passions defining my mind. It can’t know the meaning of hunger or the rush of adrenaline.It has never felt a sex drive or experienced an orgasm. Conditional AI can perform automated reasoning, Algorithmic rules like … Continue reading AI Poem by Thomas Wells
Listen to “Brahms Opus 25” below. Have you ever been to a live concert? I’m sure you saw the musicians’ faces, all peaceful and yet expressive, usually looking like they’re amazed by the sound coming out of their own instrument. Don’t they look like they don’t have a care in the world, like they’re not thinking about anything else other than the beauty of the … Continue reading Brahms Opus 25 by Rose McCloud
I blinked for two minutes into the empty air,and suddenly, three years had scuttled by,since the exit bell tolled exuberantlythrough the cluster of doors and windows;the hum of the Thames was a metal gongbut louder, Big Ben groaned;I heard the splash of the angry wavesfrom the balcony of my distant home;and each time a ship whistled across,trees cracked and blocked the streets. A soft murmur … Continue reading London After Exit by Jonathan Ukah
One possible scenario for this book review could go as follows: 1) old boomer guy reads poetry collection called Thumbsucker; 2) it is highly personal work, written by a millennial; 3) old boomer guy is perplexed or downright annoyed by the preoccupations of the poet; 4) He just doesn’t get it. This review respects the first half of that scenario—but, happily, the second half does … Continue reading Kat Giordano’s Thumbsucker Gives Permission to Be Otherwise by Charles Holdefer
The following is a review of Irish Wish by Tate Carmichael, author of her own 00s-related Burn Book, Lindsay Lohan Stole My Life. Reader discretion is advised. Okay, so I know Lindsay, like, dispensed with her dignity somewhere between banging Wilmer Valderrama and not paying her Chateau Marmo bill ‘cause she was (/is) poor, but I guess I continue to be blindsided by the depths … Continue reading Fire Crotch Embraces Her Heritage (And Little Else) in Irish Wish: A Tate Carmichael Review
Thought clouds, mood descendsin shadow, when any containing her passes over,and yet betimes some sudden radiance will out, revitalizing: a perfect abridgement of March Continue reading March by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper
It was with a pep in his step that Robert Quinlan, a recently retired corporate attorney hailed in his firm’s parting tribute for, among other fine qualities, his “unfailing courtliness,” emerged one bright autumn morning from a 66th Street medical building. Here he was, the brand-new recipient of a cardiologist’s clean bill of health, which followed last week’s thumbs up from his general practitioner, and on … Continue reading The Office of the Presidency by Michael Tilley
“The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eye—all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills—like a God.” -from Peter Shaffer’s Equus The first play that made me aware of the power of the stage was Peter Shaffer’s Equus. I must have been fourteen or fifteen years old when my father gave me his copy … Continue reading The Horse and the Rhino: A Fatal Normality by Anton Bonnici
The stars know everything—how we toiledover every piece of furniture we own—the mohair sofa with its button tufts,the dining room table sweat-polished smoothas glass, your dad’s easy-glide Barcalounger.We thought the bed too tame—mundaneas white-on-rice. That was before we did it on the lawnat four a.m., the boat dock when the tide was out, the army hammock and the diving board.We worked over the meadow, the hayloft,the … Continue reading Come, Lovers of Dark Corners by Dale Champlin
