You are currently viewing the stories for “January 2026.”
I didn’t pay much attention to Zim Scorpio at first. The container ship was far away — little more than a dark outline on the water. I’d passed plenty of freighters in far worse wind and felt I had enough breeze and time to cross the narrow Kill Van Kull from New Jersey toward Staten Island. But midway across, something [...]
It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the morning after I had ended things with Lyell. I felt a palpable weight lifted off me. That morning, everything felt bright and pure and new. I walked into a coffee shop on the corner of Bowery and Bleecker Street and noticed a familiar face on the other side of the front entrance. He [...]
In 1976, I had a brutal second grade teacher. But before we get to her, let me set the scene. P.S. 100 was located 3 blocks away from my home on Ocean Parkway, which was the dividing line between Brighton Beach proper and West Brighton. The school was smack dab in the lower middle-class, white, secular Jewish ghetto known as [...]
From 2022 to 2025, before I moved to Brooklyn, I saw Dahlia on the SIM3C express bus from Staten Island to Manhattan seventeen times.1. Oh my god. 2. Oh my god! Again! 3. I’m so happy we have this. 4. Still good, yes, everyone’s good, thanks. 5. Only a few people still from high school, like, I don’t know, do [...]
