Introduction / Brandon Stosuy
Introduction to the 1970s
From "the East Village 1970-71" / Richard Kostelanetz
From I dreamt I was a nymphomaniac! : imagining / The Black Tarantula
3170 Broadway / Pedro Pietri
From Modern love / Constance DeJong
Piss factory / Patti Smith
Blank generation / Richard Hell
It's all true / Richard Hell
I missed punk / Peter Schjeldahl
Words in reverse / Laurie Anderson
From Epiphanies / Richard Kostelanetz
From New York City in 1979 / Kathy Acker
From Bikini girl no. 8 / Lisa B. Falour
On the loose / Thurston Moore
Introduction to the 1980s
Lower East Side poem / Miguel Pinero
Lower East Side mesostics 81-82 / Holly Anderson
From Bagatelles / Peter Cherches
Newspaper poem / Bob Witz
Haiku from Public Illumination Magazine / Basho
Zooin' in Alphabet Town / Bob Holman
While you were out / Penny Arcade
Lunch break / Hal Simwitz
Lecture on Third Avenue (after v-effect) / Michael Carter
In the dark / Eric Bogosian
This is it? / Barbara Ess
Practicing without a license / Richard Prince
3 stories / Lisa Blaushild
St. Mark's baths / Tom Savage
Baby birds / Karen Finley
From "Idioglossia" / Anne Turyn
From Swimming to Cambodia / Spalding Gray
Go-going - New York & New Jersey - 1978-79 / Cookie Mueller
Three stories from The traveling woman / Roberta Allen
Poem with a title at the end / Jim Feast
Modern saint #271 / Tama Janowitz
Modern romances / Judy Lopatin
From Girls, visions and everything / Sarah Schulman
From "Phil Spector : a performance poem for three groups of voices" / Emily XYZ
On bohomelessness : a convoluted guide to the other side / Darius James
From Haunted houses / Lynne Tillman
George : Wednesday, Thursday, Friday / Dennis Cooper
Fear on 11th Street and Avenue A, New York City / Denise Duhamel
Neighbor / Thurston Moore
"The red high heels" from Love me tender / Catherine Texier
"Money" from Kill the poor / Joel Rose
Fulcrum of disaster / Susie Timmons
From Totem of the depraved / Nick Zedd
More or less urgent / Nina Zivancevic
Gathering bruises / Max Blagg
Beauties who live only for an afternoon / Denise Duhamei
On the side of the road / Janice Eidus
Bread and water / Eileen Myles
From Beer mystic / Bart Plantenga
From Horse crazy / Gary Indiana
Introduction to the 1990s
From "North of Abyssinia" / Maggie Dubris
new school 1990 / Richard Armijo
From The colorist / Susan Daitch
Love is a many splendored thing in Brooklyn / Sharon Mesmer
Into the sunset / Michael Randall
From "Lovers slash friends" / Ann Rower
Beautiful youth / Thaddeus Rutkowski
In the abbey of arcane synthesis : random thoughts posing as analysis in the global pan-assassination crisis / Carl Watson
visit from Mom / Bruce Benderson
From Two girls, fat and thin / Mary Gaitskill
In Brooklyn / Deborah Pintonelli
Janine, or how my grandmother died and left me holding the banana / Joe Maynard
Eighteen to twenty-one / David Trinidad
short history of everyone in the world / Jose Padua
From "Between the hammer and the anvil" / Lydia Lunch
Three poems from I always vote for sparrow for president / Sparrow
division of water / David Rattray
weirdness of the text / Jill S. Rapaport
"Go ahead" and "mistaken identity" / Bruce Weber
Self-portrait in twenty-three rounds / David Wojnarowicz
"War stars," an excerpt from the fictional memoir "giving up the ghost" / Mike Golden
Downtown publication roundup : an addendum
Afterword : the scene : a conversation between Dennis Cooper and Eileen Myles.
