Boog Literature
351 West 24th Street, Suite 19E
New York, NY 10011-1510
www.boognyc.com • info@boognyc.com
T: (212) 206-8899 F: (212) 206-9982
This is Boog City, a community newspaper from a group
of artists and writers based in and around New York City’s
East Village, either physically or spiritually, and sometimes
both.
This is Boog City, a group of people who question
authority, and create amazing art while doing so.
This is Boog City, a community of New Yorkers,
Americans, citizens of the world, who flourish everyday amid
every reason not to.
This is Boog City, hop in the front seat, and put your
shoulder to the wheel.
David Kirschenbaum,
editor and publisher
Boog City is a small press now its 16th year, and East Village community newspaper of the same name. The press has published more than three dozen volumes of poetry and various zines, featuring work by Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Ed Sanders, Eileen Myles, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Bernadette Mayer among many others, and theme issues on topics ranging from baseball to women's writing, to The Ramones and Talking Heads making the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.
rockstar
And all of the wind that filled my sails
just blows right through me...
I think I’m in love with myself.
I’m not who I thought I was.
I’m stoned and I’m watching T.V.
and I’m thinking
I don’t wanna be a rockstar anymore.
I don’t wanna be a rockstar.
I don’t wanna be a rockstar anymore.
I don’t wanna be a rockstar.
I don’t wanna be a rockstar.
I don’t wanna be a rockstar.
I don’t wanna be a rockstar.
And everybody looks like some body
but nobody I know.
Everywhere I think of going
is somewhere I don’t go.
Every time I say I’m thinking
I’m thinking that you knew
that there was nothing else to do.
So, I think I’m leaving you.
I’m learning to lie to myself.
I’m thinking about my health.
I’m wondering where you are and I’m thinking
I don’t wanna be a rockstar anymore.
I don’t wanna be a rockstar.
Major Matt Mason
Evening with the Financial Report
A chicken cooked under happy circumstances
Is a chicken that lasts forever.
And these various monstrosities that balloon
Under the quelling moonlight reveal the bleakness
Of the two-sided day, drive me to the fringes
Of this cylindrical existence, as we sit
On our tattered couch, futuristically naked,
While bunches of flowers hang
Upside down above us to dry throughout
The length of this long, intelligent season.
Ever ything here seems reducible to the sawed-
Off light of the candelabrum.
What does it matter if everybody is buying
Out everybody else, who reels in the general
Recession, who pillages, who divests,
Which holders savor the dismal pleasure of 1970s
Supermarket music as opposed to the prurient
Thud of disco pumping itself out of corporation phones?
Tonight I do not see beyond the shiny images
Undulating through your straw-colored hair
Like ants in an anthill, while your chiaroscuro
Eyepatch wanes and finally drops.
At this moment I do not know
How your or my hair will vanish,
How our vows will scatter like November,
How false empathy will be wielded
Like a blowtorch through a box of cake mix
Toward the one of us who survives the other.
What difference does it make, who leaves
The earth first, or second,
If we can continue to catch some of the coin-
Colored reflections of stars turning in the dark-lit sky?
Because that’s all we ever wanted
In the first place, and these withered rooms
We rest in, replete with all the small
Comforts of home, will themselves seal
Their warm shadows in envelopes of sunlight
With no return address, scorching over the streets
Of circuitous amplitudes like a firewalk.
“During WW II Bausch and Lomb produced
Over 3 million pounds of optical glass
For the war effort,” you sigh.
You, who have always known that the stars
Are the first television, as you fall asleep
With dinner on your knees.
Noelle Kocot
