In Conversation

Fukitol I read that it’s only in America and oddly one other country, New Zealand, that Big Pharma can advertise drugs directly to customers through TV ads, and I can’t speak for NZ, but here in drugged-out USA I can say the pharmaceutical commercials are awkwardly pervasive and farcical, showing people living their best life …

[transitions] summer rolling in soon mayday mirages of a greater escape on this saturday afternoon tending the low vibe of high noon hanged amidst the loved and the lost in cacophonous grandeur spun from the inside out tetherless and aloft having all that is needed from awakening to demise for the days are enough to …

Just One Puff…Piece Sunday afternoon finds me straining to grasp at a subject I’d like to exploit for another weekly installment of the Polish Hammer Poetry Corner. After fifty-something odd columns I’ve written for “In Conversation,” have I finally exhausted my mental filing cabinet of petty grievances and wry observations? Not fucking likely. But I’ll …

Pots of sun by Moe Shapiro from xPress of San Francisco Moe Shapiro’s collection Pots of sun from xPress of San Francisco reads like a restless map of consciousness—part road journal, part spiritual interrogation, part wry, self-aware performance. Taken together, the poems you’ve provided suggest a poet working in the long shadow of Beat lineage …

Flying Birds We met her on a Paris Metro platform My brother and I, buskers And Veronica there doing the same From a distance An angelic voice Over 12-string guitar Her echoing words soaring Over roaring trains The bustle of crowds “…Just someone to lay down beside me And even though it’s not real Just …

Shrugged Shoulders He lies to the camera with the confidence of a man who’s never been told no. They know he’s lying, we know he’s lying, he knows he’s lying. We shrug our shoulders once again and move on. Her voice polished like the golden cross emblazoned on her chest, the perfect spokeswoman gurgling up …

What if We Just Call the Whole Thing Off A toad sits like a plum beneath a curled leaf waiting out the rain in captive. The purple of him you simply havent seen before. The Pentagon threatens to keep the pope held hostage like the French did – until things are ironed out in Iran. …

Bad Bunny Thrusting and Spinning Signs on Beach Blvd I could have sworn I saw Bad Bunny thrusting and spinning signs for a mattress store on Beach Boulevard. I mean, I know he doesn’t need the money, but still, it makes sense, the thrusting and the mattresses. I mean really, how many mattresses do you …

No Such Thing As Karma On The F Train To Queens Or Anywhere Else When the tall thin black kid with the skateboard steps back to give me the open subway seat, I make eye contact, nod thanks and never think it has anything to do with my nearly forty years commuting between Brooklyn and …

Coon Dick Toothpicks and Other Political Atrocities The batshit crazy coming out of Washington doesn’t let up for a second. I’m tired of hearing about it, though it seems I’m intent on continuing to comment upon it. I’ve had enough of my eighty-year-old live-in father-in-law, Milt, offering his Fox News perspective. Finally, I just told …