America's Most Critical Journal since 1999
by Kevin Higgins “The sky is high / We shit on earth / We look up the sky / The earth gives birth / To our future”, Yoko Ono, Poetry (July/August 2018) (i) The Christmas lights which bat their eyelids all year round on the screaming pink terracotta roof ar... More »
If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to teach a yoga class, I’d play doom metal music and have everyone imagine: it’s 70 degrees, they’re sleeping under a palm tree, the sun is as golden as yellow daylilies. There is no rain — only the sou... More »
(a parody of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost) by Thomas Locicero Whose car is this I think I know. He cannot drive a stick-shift, though. He will not see me steal it here To go to where I need to go. His tranny surely thinks it queer... More »
by Tim Koechlin (with nods to Lennon, McCartney and the CDC) Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something I hope you’ll understand When I’ll say that something I hope you’ll wash your hands! I hope you’ll wash your hands I hope you’ll wash your han... More »
by Michael Gessner It’s good you died when you did, or you would have lived to see your darling daughter’s demise in her prime, with two little ones in the next room, precious as honey in a hive. But you escaped—talk about an act of god—in medias res... More »
By Dan Geddes On Christmas Eve Santa was making his rounds, Traveling the globe by leaps and by bounds, Arriving in Washington until he found the home of the President, whom he thought was a Clown. Santa Claus climbed down the White House chimney... More »
One Lexus May Hide Another By Linda Boroff (With acknowledgements to One Train May Hide Another by Kenneth Koch and Caesar’s Gallic Wars, interlinear translation) In a poem, one line may hide another line, In a non-disclosure agreement, one clause might hide... More »
My catalogue of pals stretches beyond Bush, Trump, and the Emperor Bokassa’s personal crocodile. For I am everywhere, and always have been: helped Claus Von Bulow rewrite his Tinder profile the day they switched his wife off; had the Cle... More »
Yeah, I’m gonna wear sweatpants to the Gol’ Corral I’m gonna eat ‘til I can’t no more I’m gonna wear sweatpants to the Gol’ Corral I’m gonna eat ‘til I can’t no more (Yum, Yum) Prime rib’s in the ... More »
by Marcia Seabury Behold him, single in his yard, Yon solitary modern neighbor! Mowing and murmuring by himself; Absorbed in all his labor. Alone he cuts and bags the grass, And raps a lyric as I pass— all quite inaudible, of course—while the Craftsman’s... More »
He had made it a molten calf: and they said: “These be thy gods.” —Exodus 32:4 Desperate, despised and dumb, a dancing bear, With Musso’s scowl, small hands and gilded hair. His puerile tantrums and his infant’s rage So ill become a statesman and a s... More »
(With apologies to Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”) I. April is the cruelest month, when youthful hearts with passion burn, and everyone else must file an income tax return. II. Draft versions of her tax retur... More »