Nostalgia is a cheap whore, available always. A low cost alternative to being in the here and now. I’ve lived my life in New York and I’m not leaving anytime soon, but the city wears people out. The noise, the dirt, the bugs, the quadrupled rent increase; the broken heart instead of the Broadway [...]
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The Truth by Liz Dolan
It’s hard to tell how old a girl is when she’s lying on a couch under an itchy green army blanket. Not that the itch matters to her because she can’t feel it. “My daughter is paralyzed,” her mother says as she smoothes the girl’s red hair. Then she secures a loose bobby pin in [...]
Fine by Ashley McCullough
he year I move to New York, Yusuf Hawkins is killed in Bed-Stuy and the city is in a racial uproar. Al Sharpton is stabbed in a schoolyard. There’s a record high of 86 in October and we wear our summer uniforms until November. When I ask to come live with him, my father hesitates [...]
Shingles: A Memoir (circa 1960) by Bob Thurber
t was Sunday and the roofers weren’t working. A huge stack of asphalt shingles sat in the backyard. The shingles were in neat, wire-strapped bundles arranged on a wooden pallet, heaped so high their collective mass looked like a small square building. On Saturday, after the roofers left, my mother caught me walking around the [...]
