Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
Every morning, before the sun or just after the sun has come depending on the season, I sip my coffee and watch the men push the cart. They are going uphill in a hurry, up to The Crossing, which they will not cross. Later, once I’ve gone to the office, returned home, prepared my evening soup, and am again sitting at the window, I will…
We pushed an air conditioner strapped to a metal dolly all the way uptown. We opened two bottles of beer by the window, sat cross-legged on an unfolded yoga mat, tapped the cold tips together under the sharp flow of air. Finally, we thought. I don’t remove the air conditioner after you leave the city. The window remains clamped down; a mouse caught in a…
My wife’s hometown of Woodview, Pennsylvania lies an hour west of Centralia, a place we pass on the drive in from John F. Kennedy Airport. “It’s been on fire for over sixty years,” Amber explains. “Centralia is basically abandoned now…there are only five or six people left who refuse to leave. My parents used to tell me about it growing up.” I glance over at…
I. I hear a change in their breathing and I do not look around but keep my eyes on the screen upon which the opera Le Nozze di Figaro plays, Marianne Crebassa as Cherubino singing Cherubino’s most beautiful aria, Voi Che Sapete, which, in the world of the opera, he has composed himself: a little song for the Countess, one of the many women with…
We bought a television, Gabe and I, a few days ago. It’s the first TV we’ve owned as a couple, a shocking and disturbing development. When we moved in together six months ago, it was under the assumption that we would never buy one. We considered ourselves above the people who spent an entire Sunday binging Netflix on their 70-inch plasma screens. Not that we…