Grand Street from Unencumbered Films on Vimeo.

  THE BOY SCOUT AND THE ANARCHIST

I smell butane fluid as I press the lighter 
with both thumbs, plastic biting, 
and you tell me about unbranched alkane 
and four carbon atoms. 
Your baby sister will only press buttons on the phone
with both thumbs, plastic biting, 
when she hears your lecture voice. 
The outlets and country codes are different in England. 
She'll be four and think 
your voice sounds funny, 
like how my Florida cousins pinch their noses 
and bare their teeth 
when they try to say 
"assassins" like I do. ("Pop" and "soda".)

--Lena Judith Drake
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   COMING FROM THE BOTTOM

 

Ostensibly, The Bottom was so called because it

was wedged in the lower portion of West Philadelphia.

The ascription, The Bottom could also have meant that

most of the residents lived at the low end of society.

Throughout The Bottom most streets were little and

narrow embanked by rows of small, lowly houses.

And to a lesser degree, there were larger thoroughfares,

avenues, apartment buildings and impressive, stalwart

homes within the area.


 --Viney Loretta Moore


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NEW: Check out our revised submission guidelines
      and our call for     AUDIO READINGS.

 A FEW CARDS SHORT

They slap their hands
on chess board-topped tables.
Sit hard like their cupped concrete
 
chairs.  Play spades, spitting
insults and stories like cards.  Sal 
recalls his crooked hand:  his corner...

--Peter Kahn

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VARIATIONS ON AN ENIGMA

Great mathematicians peering down
from the roof might be able

to compute in their heads
how many steps it’d take me

to cross the street while bleeding,
and if they cared and weren’t

constantly being accosted
by counterfeit pleas from near hysterics,

they’d be as surprised as I am
that my beard is coming in gray

--Howie Good
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Artwork by Elijah Northen 

BEDSPREAD HOUSING

Houses with tin tops shine
brighter in sun than shingles-
whether wood or composition
tile or tar, though still lacking
natural calm as thatch or straw.

In tender imagination nothing
touches the unknown forms
this sheet has taken above
pulling push-pins that hold
it fluttering to the wall.

--Matthew Rich

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--Denise Alba

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