PARIS — The most uncomfortable thing about being naked in a museum, it turns out, is the temperature. A half-hour into the first nudist tour of the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art museum in Paris, I had gotten used to the feeling of exposure, but I hadn’t acclimatized to the cold air circulating through the cavernous galleries.

Patrick E. Horrigan, in his new book Pennsylvania Station, weaves together two, carefully articulated, grand themes, one of which would have been enough to tackle, more than enough,  for your average novelist.

Patrick E. Horrigan, in his new book Pennsylvania Station, weaves together two, carefully articulated, grand themes, one of which would have been enough to tackle, more than enough,  for your average novelist.

Every where I go
Voila! There I am. 

Making a mess. 

Can't even give a compliment
Without pissing off 
Some insecure housewife.

All About Being Rescued

As our minds travel in the same direction,
back to the same scene,
back to the moment of laughing out loud.
Traveling to the exact same place,
where we both knew just
what the other one meant.

Update: Three hours after the publication of this story, Schneiderman resigned from his position. “While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office’s work at this critical time,” he said in a statement. “I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018.”

Illustration by Oliver Munday; Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty (man)

          On Saturday, the comedian Michelle Wolf, performing at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, delivered the most consequential monologue so far of the Donald Trump era. Some of the attendees claimed to have walked out of the dinner in protest during the performance; others, like the President’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have been lauded for remaining stoically in place in the face of scathing humor.

Kendrick Lamar’s recent award of the Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 album Damn. is as much of a cultural watershed moment as Duke Ellington’s infamous Carnegie Hall debut in 1943. At this pivotal point in Ellington’s career, he had already cemented his status as one of the most accomplished and prolific musicians of his generation. With hits such as “Black and Tan Fantasy,” “Mood Indigo,” “It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing),” “Take the A Train,” and many others, Ellington was sonically redefining black music while serving as one of the central sirens of a burgeoning, modern black subjectivity.

          There are scenes that speak to Sen. Kennedy’s inadequacies from being the brother of a former President and a popular politician. Sen. Kennedy also had a strained relationship with his father.

The reenactment of the car being pulled the car out of the river and the reaction of the diver and the town sheriff show the shock of the town and how political power and selfishness can collide with society. 

I see you now

from Brooklyn

and on the train, larger 

than green lady liberty.

He retired, didn't quit his day job, one of the first second third generation immigrant youth pining for space, for more road, aspirations for a better life, "making it in America." The promised land, New Jersey, Springsteen, Patti Smith, WC Williams, Ginsberg, Eliot Katz & Jack Wiler, myriads more, all legends, where the ordinary is extra and the Average is Whitman's Divine Average.

It was 4:15 – fifteen minutes after I said I’d be there to pick her up, and I wasn’t even in my car yet. Geez! The phone rang.  It was my sister. “Can’t talk now, I’ll need to call you back. Mom’s waiting and…”  

“Uh, yeah! She’s called me three times wondering if you’d forgotten her at the church,” she said tersely.

“Gotta go.”  The only reason I was stuck with this job was because my sister, Laura, was at home taking care of two sick kids. As I approached the intersection, a block from the church, I noticed an elderly woman in front of me. She was perfectly still. 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — In a plain brown building sits an office run by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, a place for people who have been held accountable for their crimes and duly expressed remorse.

Just a few yards up the street lies a different kind of rehabilitation center, for a country that has not been held to nearly the same standard.

One of the most compelling sequences in the Oscar-winning Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s indictment of Wall Street’s role in the 2008 global financial meltdown, involved not the banker culprits but their supporting cast. These were the Ivy League accomplices. Ferguson mightily skewered these economists for the cover they gave the sub-prime Hamptons dwelling wise guys whose rescue turned out to be a pretext for one of the largest reverse-Robin Hood wealth transfers in history.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, delivering the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture to cap PEN America’s World Voices Festival, speaks out about threats to press freedom around the world–and in the United States. (Watch again!)

In the spirit of Marvin Gaye, one of several artists honored in No One Can Be at Peace Unless They Have Freedom, this volume is Michael Simanga’s What’s Going On book. It is an urgent and majestic mix of inner-city-blues-what’s-going-on-save-the-children--mercy-mercy-me-right-on-wholy-holy sensibilities remastered for our times.

Flags waving
in the wind
warmer air.

Tasting of Hurricane

At sixteen, he hammers

black stones

to fit over breasts,

to bless the new wine

tasting of hurricane.

INDIO, Calif. — Let’s just cut to the chase: There’s not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year, or any year soon, than Beyoncé’s headlining set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday night.

It was rich with history, potently political and visually grand. By turns uproarious, rowdy, and lush. A gobsmacking marvel of choreography and musical direction.