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The Spirit Tree
by Peter Wortsman 04/28/2019Neighborhood: Jackson Heights
Rising, miraculous, precariously leaning in front of the attached one-family, red brick house in which I grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and for years thereafter when my widowed mother was the sole remaining occupant, a towering fir tree loomed twice as tall as the roof and climbing. Having felled all extraneous timber and reduced […]
Old Lefties: An Oral History
by Paul Buhle 04/21/2019Neighborhood: Brighton Beach, Co-op City, Featured, Lower East Side, Ozone Park
Editor’s Note — These poems emerged out of oral histories of the American Left that Paul Buhle conducted forty years ago. They are not literal transcripts, but lyrically condense the stories he heard. Buhle traveled New York from Coop-City to Ozone Park to the Lower East Side to Brighton Beach for this project. The old […]
World Series
by John Reidy 04/07/2019Neighborhood: Flushing, Shea Stadium, Woodside
When I was thirteen years old and in the seventh grade, I loved to go to Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets. I loved baseball and would sneak into the ball park all the time. When the Mets were on road trips, I practically lived there. It was my stadium. I would sit […]
The Sultry Scent of Formaldehyde
by Peter Wortsman 03/10/2019Neighborhood: East Village, Queens
My memories of high school are burdened by two deciding factors: the absence of girls and my aversion to math and science, both regrettable, given the fact that the prestigious institution I attended, Stuyvesant High School—then still in its old digs, a venerable building on East 15th Street—was all boys and all about math and […]
The Ohio Convention
by John Reidy 03/03/2019Neighborhood: Greenpoint, Port Authority, Woodside
I ran into Dad’s room after hearing my name called. “Take off your shoes,“ he said. I wondered what the heck was going to happen now. That morning my mom had told me that I would be going to Akron, Ohio with Dad to see the people who caused his nightmares and screaming. His war […]
Drawing
by Angel Eduardo 02/17/2019Neighborhood: Corona
An el train chugged across the tracks, shadows cutting in and out from the sun beaming above it. Cars cruised along the streets of Corona, Queens, as though there was nowhere to go. Storefronts sat like rows of sleepy eyes, their riveted steel lids rising just enough for their doors to open. The sidewalks were […]
Christmas Balls
by John Reidy 12/16/2018Neighborhood: Woodside
I came up the stairs from the subway. The cold air on Queens Boulevard blew hard. I turned and looked back down to see where my sisters Sara and Carol were. I was relieved to see them coming up towards me. I’d been lost before and it wasn’t fun. Behind them was my dad. He […]
A Trip to Aqueduct
by Bonnie J. Glover 10/21/2018Neighborhood: Aqueduct, East New York, South Ozone Park
The day after I turned ten, my mother took me to my first horse race at Aqueduct. Hitting the regular numbers didn’t pay as well as the horses, and sometimes when Mama had an itch to gamble she couldn’t wait on the numbers man, Mr. Sheyanne, to come around. Besides which, she whispered to me […]
The King of New York
by Jason Schwartzman 03/05/2017Neighborhood: Astoria, Queens
I. From a distance the crown almost looks like solid gold. But as I walk farther up 30th Avenue in Astoria, I can tell there is something not quite right about it. It is glinting, sure, but I realize the crown is made of curled paper. It’s from Burger King. I am now only a […]
You’re Out of the Night
by Beth Hahn 06/17/2016Neighborhood: Flushing, Lower East Side, Queens, Uncategorized
On Match.com, Ken’s moniker was “Dull.” He wrote that among his favorite things were office carpeting, spam, and waiting rooms. “I bet he lives in one of those storage units off the highway,” my friend Meg said as she read over my shoulder. My own profile was styled after Nancy Drew. Hair color? Titian. Hobbies? […]
The Tape
by Martin Kleinman 04/26/2016Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Chelsea, Jackson Heights, Manhattan, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park
-1- Once upon a time, there existed a New York City economy where a young person fresh out of college could, with a straight face, think in terms of “building a career.” Imagine such optimism. The notion of “career” seems so trite now, forty-plus years on, so immaterial, in this age of downsizing, outsourcing, off-shoring. […]
Remembering, Memorial Day
by Ivan Nahem 04/17/2015Neighborhood: Queens
On weekends it’s a tossup, either my wife or I go on expedition for our Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and this was my turn. Because I knew the usual place on Queens Boulevard was closed for repairs I had to head down to the one on 61st in the Woodside valley. On the way back I […]