Michael Simms: Orpheus in Hollywood
Michael Chabon hasn’t so much straddled genres as rejuvenated whatever he touches, making literary fiction more engaging and accessible and popular genres less cliched and formulaic.
Etheridge Knight: Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Hard Rock / was / “known not to take no shit
From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it:
Jose Padua: These Rhymes Out to All the Nations
every day we stay alive is a reminder
that the universe is a thing of great natural beauty
Carolyn Miller: Sunset on the 38 Geary
Each face staring straight ahead, no one speaking,
each rider holding the day carefully, like an egg,
past the piroshki bakeries, past the restaurants
selling pho and bulgoki and Shanghai dumplings
and carnitas, past the Church of the Star of the Sea
James Crews: Small Moments
The world is not made only of sorrow
and heartbreak. Something always
slips through the gaps of a given day
Charles Bukowski: so you want to be a writer?
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
Kim Stafford: Poems for a Cause
Maybe we’re past hints and whispers,
our chance gone for subtle scents
and fugitive flavors—time for coffee
black, jolt of onion, garlic unadorned.
Arlene Weiner: The Real Thing
Maz is a theater person: actor,
writer, director. Triple threat. Gay.
His partner Donny’s a drag queen,
Dawna Day.
Michael Simms: Prospero needs a little nap
Vox Populi will endure, albeit at a slower pace.
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?
‘The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.’
Thomas Brady: No One Can Insult Me Like You
People do die of love. But the beautiful never know what they do.
Emily Dickinson: Presentiment – is that long Shadow
Presentiment – is that long Shadow – on the Lawn –
Baron Wormser: Fool
After the fool leaves The Tragedy of King Lear, where
does he go?
Home to see the wife, play ringolevio with the
neighborhood kids?
Jennifer Franklin: As Antigone
I will not walk away.
The moment the nurse
pressed your splotched
body into my arms,
your needs fixed my fate.
