“Awoke by D-Ray’s B-Day Muddle” by Chas Hansen

“Awoke by D-Ray’s B-Day Muddle” for Dennis McMillan When the obits fall silent, dreams take up the slack I was lecturing labyrinthine digs in strait-laced Kansas. Rather, some whelp was ignoring me until Gary C and D -Ray Showed with drawls so rich we soon flowed like tepid syrup Towards a Brutalist lecture hall while […]

“Riot at the Cattle Prod” by Jim Ruland

The Cattle Prod was packed with every kind of punk in Southern California. Every rowdy boy and reckless girl she’d every partied with was here. Not the actual people per se but the personas they projected, because everybody went undercover at the punk rock show. The sick-of-it-all sons and daughters of dildos and douchebags, each […]

Interview: Iain McIntyre by Andrew Nette

On The Fly!: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879-1941 (PM Press) is a new anthology which brings together dozens of stories, poems, songs, stories, and articles produced by hoboes to create an insider history of the subculture’s rise and fall. Adrenaline-charged tales of train hopping, scams, and political agitation are combined with humorous and satirical songs, […]

“The Silver Dagger” by Robert Cooperman

Silver Dagger—the Daughter “All men are false, so says my mother . . .”—“Silver Dagger,” American folk song Mother says I must give up the young man singing love songs outside our window, hoping I’ll run off with him, or let him in, though if I did, Mother would slice him like a ham, with […]

“Border Feud” by Lance Mason

That summer in Oxnard was hot, humid in the mornings, with dew on the grass, and it smelled of the lima bean harvest and the sugarbeet mill out on Wooley Road. Now it was night, just on nine o’clock under a low, lemon moon, and Chuy Muro, in his ’39 Chevy coupe, was pulling across […]

“Rehab” by Martin Goolsarran

The lights stung my eyes as they flittered awake to the clinical glare of fluorescent brilliance. The white walls, blinds, and polished-steel runners on the bed screens gleamed a million dollar smile back at me when my eyes had adjusted to the splendour. The sound of the heart rate monitor ran a steady patter of […]

“The Kick The Bucket Tour” by Jo Perry

The light turned red while the driver regaled her passengers with details of Ramon Novarro’s torture-murder. That’s why the Kick The Bucket Tour’s roofless matte-black van lurched so late from Laurel Canyon, where Novarro lived, into the tangle of westbound traffic on Sunset and forced a motorcycle cop to swerve into the next lane. Oops, […]

“XXX Marks the Spot” by J.L. Delozier

Ella flounced from the theatre, her diamond earrings scattering angry slivers of red light down the deserted street. Not a cab in sight. Not at this hour; not in this part of town. He’d planned it that way. She stomped one glittery Louboutin against the curb and turned on the lanky man hovering at her […]

“Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?” by Melanie Dante

This piece is shared in memory of Greg Teetsell. “Oh, darling!” she exclaimed. Her blue eyes lit bright, lips tinted pink like an old photograph. “Wasn’t tomorrow wonderful?” Sparkling confetti fell through the air. “Wasn’t it just extraordinary?” They were dancing on top of the world. Band music played softly in the background. The moment […]

“Green Men on Horseback in Baltimore” by Clarinda Harris

On the circles, green statues ride like South American  liberators above the breeding vegetation—Robert Lowell, “July in Washington” I. Walking down the steep hill from the Washington Monument toward Centre Street, Kilo and I descend into a steamy tunnel of heat. July in Baltimore. John Eager Howard and the Marquis de Lafayette bushwhack green […]