The Musician’s Testament “Being a living legend is such a precarious livelihood. What a ducking of responsibility!” (John Cale) “Success means being worried about everything else except money” (Johnny Cash) I’m putting down this last eyewitness account leading up to zero hour because all the registers have gone into the red; everything’s going to blow. If I am stopped in […]
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HOW LEAVING HOME WORKS I need highways, infrastructure that can differentiate between the town where I grew up and the place I need to be. And a Ford that’s up to it, getting on but faithful, its leather bucket seats faded from their prime, but radio rock stations all preset and fifty times louder than the engine. Blacktop, […]
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Immortality You carried your vengeance beyond decease – Slowed down the pyre’s cleansing, Slowed down the soil’s, the water’s warmth, Left total body change open to the senses – Pursued your cause beyond its effects, Stepped out beyond all examples, Further than all reflections, Forestalled all worth – All kindred, all common links – Seeking to frame a cleansing, […]
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An hour a day, sometimes more, I chipped away with mallet and chisel on a block of marble I found in Carrara and shipped to New York on the deck of a trawler. I offered the marble to a famous sculptor who told me he works in granite only so I grabbed his beret and one of his smocks […]
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Bodies Exhibit – By Fern G. Z. Carr Black walls, track lighting, spectators milling about silently, reverently surrounded by vascular systems preserved in fluid, skeletons, diseased organs, foetuses in jars. Hollowed out corpses in life-like poses play soccer, hold hands, boast their musculature – a post-mortem artistic rendition of red meat. In a display case, a […]
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AGE HAS ITS PRIVILEGE – By Ray Gallucci When you are old and prone to mold, It matters not if you they’ll scold For skipping meetings by not heeding Platitudes they keep repeating. It’s right you’ve earned to choose to spurn What management claims you should learn. Once you have heard it all before, Their tired words are just […]
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In this small, blue room— overheated, clenched by melancholy, I sit the night, guarding carnival goods, blood potions, the knife thrower’s serrated blades. Two buskers beach-walk a tune, harmonies muffled by wave’s insistence. A mathematical conceit of stars burning to earth enriches water’s lap against pier beams, a night sailor’s crossing. Taken on as apprentice, the alchemist insists […]
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Stone Slate – By Melissa R. Mendelson They tell me that I am alive. If that were so, shouldn’t I breathe? Listen to your heart, and I’m stupid for listening once more. I don’t hear anything. Check your pulse. “I am checking,” I scream. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. How could they tell me what they tell me, and how could I […]
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A Nuclear Childhood What if your parents had never met had never married had never yelled at each other and instead had wed someone they loved and lived peacefully all those years. That would have been their Eden but you shaking there now decades later wouldn’t be with us cursing the tremors of a […]
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Those who sent their men to war Still wait, forever wait Their return at full moon. Those whose men returned long ago Still wait, forever wait To be issued their fortune. We hoped amidst the struggle Our blood shall dry not, but sprout Into long-bearing palm trees of joy As we wrestled with nightmares of time We remained awake […]
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