drmstream

Hav­ing a Coke with You BY Frank O’Hara is even more fun than going to San Sebas­t­ian, Irún, Hen­daye, Biar­ritz, Bay­onne or being sick to my stom­ach on the Trav­es­era de Gra­cia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a bet­ter hap­pier St. Sebas­t­ian partly because of my love for you, partly […]

The heav­enly blisses Of his kisses Fill me with ecstasy. He’s sweet just like choco­late candy And just like honey from the bee. I’m Just Wild About Har­ryfrom Shuf­fle Along. In 1921, Broad­way jumped to East 63rd Street on New York’s West Side with the first inte­grated musi­cal to make it big on stage. The hit num­ber was […]

Her name was Arline. She was my father’s mother. She died in 1949 when my father was 16. We knew very lit­tle about her grow­ing up. In the early 1980’s, after my grand­fa­ther died, a let­ter arrived at the house from my father’s aunt Marie who was six years younger than her sis­ter. My par­ents were […]

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in oth­ers but give them life, and not only life, but that great con­scious­ness of life.“ — Jack Ker­ouac The first time that I read On the Road, it took days for the roar to sub­side. The world Ker­ouac painted […]

The Bow­ery in New York City in the early 1920’s. Pro­hi­bi­tion is around the cor­ner — then the restau­rant will move up to street level and the liquor store down below.

When­ever we find, in two forms of life that are unre­lated to each other, a sim­i­lar­ity of form or of behav­ior pat­terns which relates to more than a few minor details, we assume it to be caused by par­al­lel adap­ta­tion to the same life-preserving func­tion. Kon­rad Lorenz One hot Fri­day after­noon a long time ago […]

Some­times the dogs in this neigh­bor­hood start an alarm chain.  Lit­tle Char­lieDog is the ful­crum.  The dogs back across the pond begin to bark, the dogs across the street bark, and Char­lie runs from one side of the upper yard to the other, trans­fer­ring the barks with his pecu­liar stri­dent yelp.  His mus­cles get taut […]

She was born Malka Opiekun in 1898 in New York and made her debut on stage when she was six.  In the 1920’s she was the doyenne of the Yid­dish The­ater; her first Eng­lish role didn’t come until she was in her early 40’s. You might rec­og­nize her…she was Yente the Match­maker in Fid­dler on the […]

When I write a poem I try to keep the words as sim­ple and true as I can man­age. The temp­ta­tion to show-off with lan­guage is always there, and the temp­ta­tion to force mean­ing will make me pause and doubt the words. I know that the music is in the plain­song of lan­guage and that […]

Some months later, after going on with the Cen­sus Bureau full-time, Ade­laide will be sit­ting in a vast room in Man­hat­tan with a hun­dred other women, work­ing through the cen­sus sheets from other dis­tricts in New York City, cal­cu­lat­ing the sums of each page and plac­ing the sheets in great binders that are orga­nized by […]