Special Poetry Issue
“rules of verse: poetry inspired by the velvet underground”
Contributors
Maxwell Bauman, Vikki C., Richard Cabut, Natalye Childress, JD Clapp, Deron Eckert, Mike Ferguson, Tim Frank, John Goodluck, Ryan Hooper, Robert Frede Kenter, Árón Ó Maolagáin, Tempest Miller, Mark Parsons, Pierre Minar, Ivan A. Salazar, Carla Sarett, Marty Shambles, Crys Silden, hiromi suzuki, Rachel Turney, Erick von Neff, and Paul Warren
Cover art by Paul Warren
my singer-songwriter friend charlie sang
by Deron Eckert
“Charlie drank so much he was honored / with the nickname “The Red Stripe Demon.” / When Charlie wasn’t at the bar serving Red Stripe, / he drank Bud Heavy, and when he didn’t drink, / he drank Coca Cola. Something about red and white...”
my name is lou reed and i looooooooove death, destruction, pain & pain & money & pain.
by Tempest Miller
“My name is Lou Reed and in 1968 the Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague gives me a new / empathy for Andy Warhol’s genital herpes / when he feigns virginity.”
radio minerva (lament)
by Árón Ó Maolagáin
“Juno-faced prudes who, in Lou Reed costume, / lobby for laws to put Venus in chains. / Pretenders, proud, abstain the touch of fur.”
three poems
by Vikki C.
“Original factory settings filtered with glam, / the camera lapping up our gypsum auras.”
a little closer to you
by Pierre Minar
““Get out of the way, Lou,” I thought, because I wanted to get / A little closer to you.”
anatomy of want
by Crys Silden
“fear has a smell / like withdrawal / no color / intangible / like a wood worm / drilling into your brain…”
three poems
by Erich von Neff
“Debbie Harry*/ Debbie Harry / Thrill me / With your music / Hunt me with your eyes / Lacerate me with your claws / Devour me / With your lips of fire…”
a poem of electric shadows
by Ivan A. Salazar
“The man with the sunglasses, / a black hole in the shape of a face, / walks down the street that isn’t a street, / but a wound that hums.”
heroine
by Marty Shambles
“…the room had a single / bulb hanging from the / ceiling, a dirty / mattress on the floor– / like a depressing movie.”
having been apprised, a fragment
by Mark Parsons
“…the thousand bulging eyelids / that cover the thousand eyes of night inside my body, / that pulse and flicker in deep sleep / just under the skin / as the mind…”
some kind of love
by Richard Cabut
“Play the same song endlessly – a spectral lounge tune with a neon crawl – under hot velvet dabs of light that don’t quite refuse to vanish.”
three poems
by Ryan Hooper
“Such detuned disorder / laughing annihilation down at the 7-Heaven. /When I first heard them, the earth turned; I was hooked…”
three poems
by Maxwell Bauman
“Wake up the dragon. / Pandemonium slumbers below the waves, / eating its own tail for breakfast, / consuming stars for dinner.”
two poems
by Natalye Childress
“you were raised in the first, by the lakes of tuileries, among the lilies in l’orangerie.”
visual poetry by mike ferguson
text
i’ll be your mirror
by Carla Sarett
“Andy’s doing soup cans / because why not…/...& I don’t know why I’m / exploding over Nico’s / forlorn Factory Euro- / glamor…”
something between the circus and the sewer
by JD Clapp
“…One night Carlo bragged how / Much cooler we were / Than those crackheads / Behind the office.”
listening to the velvet underground at 16
by Tim Frank
“When we were sixteen / We listened to The Velvets / While smoking scraps of weed / Among plastic ghosts / And corrupted hauls of ash.”
sunday clown, monday bees
by hiromi suzuki
“A deep sigh blew away the raindrops / Made the light sway into the darkness…”
visual poetry by robert frede kenter
by Robert Frede Kenter
“Robert Frede Kenter, born Hamilton, Ontario (the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas ) is a widely published writer, visual artist & publisher of Ice Floe Press ( www.icefloepress.net)”
Velvet Underground Vibes
-
![]()
rules of verse
Digital Art by Paul Warren
-
![]()
all the pizza parties - remembering the pizza underground
CNF by Rachel Turney
“For five glorious years Macaulay Culkin fronted a band called The Pizza Underground (2013-2018)…The group played Velvet Underground songs, but swapped out the lyrics with words about pizza. Think cheese, slice, dough, and delivery.”
-
![]()
velvet frequencies
Digital Art by John Goodluck
“Inspired by the Velvet Underground’s experimental spirit, [these] works embrace dissonance, imperfection, and the beauty of transformation.
-
![]()
digital art by robert frede kenter
“For me the VU, and the hybridity of intersecting artistic forms in Lower Manhattan were/are by example, esthesis, how rebellion & transformation could be embodied in sound, movement, revolutionary ideas, text and art.”
