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What’s in a Name
by liz dolan 05/06/2013Neighborhood: Bronx, Midtown
Sitting in the second row of the balcony at the New York City Center ballet, I, sixteen, entranced by the melodies of Swan Lake, watched a tall, muscular sun-god pirouetting and jeteing on the stage. As he soared, I gasped at the height of his jumps and his sure-footed landings. But I had not come [...]
Playing Hide and Seek in the Bronx
by Jackie Minghinelli 04/25/2013Neighborhood: Bronx
Decades ago, when my brother was about ten and I around fourteen, he began to spend an extraordinary amount of time in his room. We lived in an apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in the Bronx. There were muggings, petty and not so petty thefts, and a few cases of violent crimes. Still, we played [...]
The Circle Line
by Mary Gordon 04/02/2013Neighborhood: Across the River, All Over, Featured
She throws an envelope onto the kitchen table, vaguely in my direction. She has written my name on it, and underlined it twice. I know what’s in it: it’s my birthday and inside it there will be, as always, a check. I am only ten-years-old, and I do not exactly know what to do with [...]
Of Love and Real Estate
by Alba Brunetti 04/01/2013Neighborhood: Featured, Park Slope, Prospect Park, Windsor Terrace
Breaking up is hard. That’s true even if you’ve been thinking about it a long time – weighing the scales back and forth. Am I better staying in this thing or am I better getting out? Sometimes it can go on for years, like it did for me. Because parts of it were perfect and [...]
That’s My Daughter In The Water
by Trevor Laurence Jockims 03/27/2013Neighborhood: Featured, Upper East Side
Getting your two year old daughter into a bathing suit in a men’s changing room can be a bit like stuffing an eel into a pillowcase. For some reason I thought the smart move would be to undress myself first, get my trunks on, my flip-flops, grab my towel, then shed Hana down to her [...]
The Dirty Side Of A Car Wash
by eugene barron 03/15/2013Neighborhood: Bronx
I believe my father owned one of the first automatic car washes in New York City, located on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx. It was around 1950 and I can still recall a TV blip of him driving into the car wash and the newscaster, John Cameron Swayze, making note of this distinct new type [...]
Of Landlords and Cousins
by Elena Schwolsky 03/03/2013Neighborhood: Featured, Sunset Park
Of Landlords and Cousins My landlord visits our brownstone apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn at least three times a week to “fix” something. He is a saxophone player from the city of Odessa on the Black Sea in the Ukraine---a city I have never visited but feel a connection to because my grandparents were born [...]
Zone A
by Tom Diriwachter 02/27/2013Neighborhood: Featured, Staten Island
Hurricane Irene bared down on the East Coast, while my mother was in the Vent Unit of Staten Island University Hospital, on a respirator and recovering from her second abdominal surgery. Located in South Beach, designated Zone A, the hospital faced mandatory evacuation. A team of medical personnel, including her surgeon, the Director of the [...]
Ellis Island
by Robert Viscusi 02/03/2013Neighborhood: Ellis Island
The following sonnets are excerpted from Robert Viscusi's forthcoming book, Ellis Island, which will be published in March 2013 by Bordighera Press. Random arrangements of lines from the 624 sonnets that comprise this epic work can be discovered via the Random Sonnet Generator at ellisislandpoem.com. This is the first time these poems have appeared as written [...]
SMASHING KNIVES
by peter nolan smith 12/28/2012Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Midtown
In the Greater Depression the employment opportunities for a man my age were limited in New York. No company wanted to pay my worth, for a younger man will do the job for a third the wage and his knowledge of labor resistance is zero. However my absolute willingness to work has overcome most obstacles [...]
Starry Night
by Kevin Kinsella 12/04/2012Neighborhood: Downtown Brooklyn
“If stars are lit...” - V. V. Mayakovsky Had the receptionist been Dante Alighieri, he might have strung a banner along the wall of the windowless waiting room advising visitors to “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But the person who pointed me in the direction of this circle of Hell was no Dante--nor [...]
The Threat
by Mindy Greenstein 12/04/2012Neighborhood: Featured, Flatlands
The wailing woke me at 3:00 AM. I tried to ignore it. I had to get up for work in a few hours. A bus and two subways, my commute to Manhattan was substantial. At first, I thought it must be a dog crying in the cold winter’s night. But after a few seconds, I [...]
