Judith Malina and Filip Marinovich

Judith Malina was born in Germany in 1926 and is a theatre and film actress, director, and writer. She moved to New York at the age of three in 1929. She co-founded the world-renowned Living Theatre in 1947. She has appeared in such films as Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and The Addams Family (1991) and has published a series of her diaries. Her many awards include a Guggenheim fellowship (1985), the 2008 Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards, and the 2009 Edwin Booth Award from the Doctoral Theatre Students Association of the City University of New York.

Walking in a city of which I’ve never heard
And of which I don’t know the name,
And thinking my thoughts:

I’ll walk to the end of the street,
And then turn and go back to the restaurant
Where the others are waiting for me;
And we’ll get back into the car
And drive to the next city,
Working our way across Poland.

But walking aimlessly, on a street
That I’ll never visit again, unknown
And unnoticed, not even really
Noticing much
I attain an identity
Of which environment
      usually robs me.

—Judith Malina

Filip Marinovich is a poet and a playwright. He is the author of Zero Readership (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008) and And If You Don’t Go Crazy I’ll Meet You Here Tomorrow (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011). He wrote and directed the plays Skin Around the Earth, Throne Room Snow, and The Karma Bookshop for his theatre company Comet Party. His work has appeared in Brooklyn Rail, EOAGH, Aufgabe, Village Zendo Journal, and 6x6. He lives in New York City.

			I'm so hot for you 
			when I walk 
		I can feel 
			  the balls 
	moving in my pants. 

	the pants are mine but not the balls. 
	     I am an American. 
		Anthem anthem anthem.
	hand sanitizer sand hanitizer
					american 
	american anathemizer. 
		Euthanasia stands at my back
	waiting to invade me when I fall. 
I've fallen and I can't get up. 
		I am an american. 
			it means my car is broken
	and I can't get my teeth fixed and 
    my health insurance comes from the moon above my house
	a moon for the misbegotten 
		because begotten in the america 
			of begatting. 
				every corner a gat. 
       boom boom. the grammar of corner
	man corner mad and coroner. 
         So gat me out of here. 
	    but I know not the alt-
	ernative, Ernie and Bert know it
    you have to have a paperclip collection and pigeons on the roof
when your puppet room-mate dies of AIDS. I am Ernie dead of AIDS. 

I am Ernie among the shades. 
See me after class. 
		       see me after America admits
			it has a class problem. 
		when smell freezes over
					   the moon
			the cow jumped over my spoon 
			  as I was cooking 
			   the whip cream dollop in it. 
		Attack of the lapdogs is the name of this excavation 
					site. 
	Attack of the Kermit dogs.  

—Filip Marinovich