we drink whiskey like our fathers


Exene Cervenka, Beautiful, 2006

Reminder: Enter now for the contest to win a copy of All Roads...But This One from Luddite Kingdom Press. Email your entry before Dec. 22 at midnight for consideration.


Greta Van Susteren Has A Sexy Perpetual Sneer
-- by Dennis Mahagin

Olberman had
a nasty cold.
When the power came
back on, we pawned
loose gold in lieu of
Cable, we watched,
we watched
the follies unfold.

Behind Barack's

Reform Talk, rational thought

and ironical middle name,

we nearly forgot 
about that war in… Hell, 

it was Yesterday's News!

Until some guy got

all mad, went and

threw the Shoes. 


Not one, but two herky shoes
at Junior! Not one, but two

herky shoes
at Junior! We didn't know the boy
could move like that. We blew fuses
on a billion Tivos, watching, watching,
watching...Somebody, by God

should have
thought of it sooner, before Bernard
Madoff with all the silver, and Cheney
rode shotgun for sunset crying:

"HI OOOOH!... HI OOOOH!"

Meanwhile
O'Reilly doesn't know
he's Live, we watch him gnaw
a whole wad of lemon Chapstick,
Geraldo does the Charleston,
shock, awe, guffaw so

slapstick! 


Bill O'Reilly does not
know he is Live,

this contagion must be
immune to triangulation
in a Kandahar cave,
Solstice season, Mullahs

slap High Fives, we watch

without reason


Prayer to Escape from the Marketplace
-- by James Wright

I renounce the blindness of the magazines
I want to lie down under a tree
This is the only duty that is not death.
This is the everlasting happiness
Of small winds.
Suddenly,
A pheasant flutters, and I turn
Only to see him vanishing at the damp edge
Of the road.


The World And I
-- by Laura Riding

This is not exactly what I mean
Any more than the sun is the sun.
But how to mean more closely
If the sun shines but approximately?
What a world of awkwardness!
What hostile implements of sense!
Perhaps this is as close a meaning
As perhaps becomes such knowing.
Else I think the world and I
Must live together as strangers and die-
A sour love, each doubtful whether
Was ever a thing to love the other.
No, better for both to be nearly sure
Each of each-exactly where
Exactly I and exactly the world
Fail to meet by a moment, and a word.