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The Cemetery Exercist
by Vanessa Beatriz Golenia 11/01/2020Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Ridgewood
A cemetery was never a place I imagined myself doing squats. But in late March, when New York City shut down gyms and public parks and braced itself for a deadly COVID-19 outbreak, I found myself at the gates of Evergreens Cemetery in Queens, sporting black leggings and a pink hoodie, ready to sweat. Like […]
Haunted House
by Susan Volchok 07/19/2020Neighborhood: Flushing
In the beginning, it was an ordinary house on an ordinary street in Flushing, Queens, just around the corner from ours. There was an older girl, Mary Ann, who was our sometime babysitter, and a younger boy, Johnny, who was several years older than I. A cherished childhood memory of mine concerns an afternoon (though […]
We Stand Together
by Angel Eduardo 07/12/2020Neighborhood: Astoria
As I approached Astoria Park, I was struck by a wave of incongruities. It was a gorgeous day—the trees lush with leaves, a nascent summer sun beaming from a clear blue sky—but I had to keep it at a distance. I wore a mask for protection from the pandemic, which still loomed despite it being […]
Gone to Flowers, Every One
by Jeff Loeb 04/12/2020Neighborhood: Ridgewood
“Okay, so now whatta my gone do? Phone won’t charge. Can’t read another word. Thirteen hours sleep. Chocolate’s gone. Weed guy disappeared. Seen everything on Netflix—twice! Corona’s a stone bitch, is what it is.” Sound familiar—maybe one or two nouns changed? It’s the plague—Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, or Neville […]
Dust to Dust
by Jeff Loeb 03/15/2020Neighborhood: Middle Village, Sunset Park
I blame Basquiat. He’s where my whole Trump grave fixation started, unlikely as that sounds. It was right after the holidays—January 2, 2018, to be exact (It’s nice of iPhones to keep track of photo dates isn’t it?)—that Carolyn and I first went to Green-Wood Cemetery. Generally we were there to explore: ostentatious tombs, towering […]
The Baby Jesus Miracle
by John Reidy 12/22/2019Neighborhood: Woodside
The red felt blanket hung over the kitchen doorway. It looked like Swiss cheese from all the dog bites. Somehow it kept the heat from the stove in the kitchen. I sat on the dirty linoleum floor, looked out of the frosted window and saw that it was dark. As my last eight of spades […]
Roommates
by Don MacLaren 10/19/2019Neighborhood: Astoria, Corona, Crown Heights, Ground Zero, Harlem, Hell's Kitchen
I’ve spent time in over 20 countries and at least 40 US states. In my travels, many people have told me that though New York City might be a nice place to visit, it’s certainly not a place for a person to live. But thank God there is a New York. One of the best […]
Learning to Drive
by Lily Lopate 10/13/2019Neighborhood: Cobble Hill, Flushing
I am learning to drive for the second time. On Sundays, I take classes at “Learn-Rite,” a school in Flushing. The school boasts a neon blue sign illustrating a yellow car and red stop sign. The graphics’ cheap branding displays cartoon-like pictures as if to reassure students that this endeavor is simple, achievable, and above […]
Mirrors
by John Reidy 08/25/2019Neighborhood: Queens, Woodside
I was eleven when I got my first paper route. You had to be thirteen. “If the route manager approves it, I’ll give it to you,” Freddy Bullwinkle said. Kids called him Bullwinkle because he had big ears. A few days later it was mine. The Long Island Star Journal. “Remember, John, the most […]
Settling
by Abby Hofstetter 08/11/2019Neighborhood: Long Island, Queens, The Catskills
I broke up with my first boyfriend one month, two weeks, and four days after I found out he was fucking his neighbor. I never told him that I’d overheard them. He never wanted to fight; he didn’t want us to be the couple who fought. It was important to him that we maintain a […]
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, 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 […]