They’re dressing up cats on Facebook and someone has taught a dog to play volleyball— a natural, he always makes the return. Bocelli and Orlenski transcend and console, nepenthe for the quarantined. I hold...
Happy hour in the memory care unit means Frank Sinatra on the stereo, kiwi smoothies in little plastic cups, and my mom, wearing elasticized pants and my dad’s old zip-up sweater, dancing among wheelchairs...
“…to become native of this place, if we are to survive here, and our neighbors too, our work is to learn to speak the grammar of animacy, so that we might be truly at home.” –Robin Wall Kimmerer...
Como Pizza 4035 Broadway ★★★★★ $ · Pizza A hot hot slice, a treat, the epitome of NYC, an orange bubble of oil shimmering on the surface of...
Note: This essay contains spoilers. Bong Jung-Ho’s award-winning film Parasite centers around two families, the Kims and the Parks, each with four members: father, mother, son, and daughter. The Kims are all savvy, intelligent, and hardworking;...
Listen to my last breath you’ll hear each breath I’ve drawn Since my voice changed and the sound got Deeper incline your head pull down a shroud from the heaven white Folks get peace privacy from pull one down To cover us...
1. Because the blue and gold pot on my windowsill is made of Prague glass, it seems to glow in the dark. There are four small windows in the bedroom where I am living now. Deep wells set into the low wall of an attic with a sloping ceiling. Each...
FLACCID COVID ODE Threw a book party but no one came— _____ MAKE NO MISTAKE You didn’t wear a mask to the Hasid funeral during Mardi Gras! You didn’t plan ahead and bring enough PPE to the BBQ in the Lone-Star State where abortions are no longer...
In 1967, when I was 7 years old, I learned to pace at night. Those were nights when my father and his fellow black ministers in the Tioga-Nicetown neighborhood of Philadelphia held ride-alongs with Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo’s cops to prevent...
The homeless man, whom I’ll call Gerald, hunched on the end of my exam table, gingerly picking at the metal shield taped over his left eye. “It happened like this, see, I was out panhandling, and with this new virus thing I’ve been trying to keep to...
Here are some seemingly unrelated facts: One of my daughters used to babysit a young boy in an apartment down the hall. The boy called her “La-lot.” Without revealing my daughter’s name, I can say that “La-lot” is nowhere close to it. The boy’s name...
Blanche walked through the lobby, her hands in her pants pockets, and looked out the window. Her short hair, usually curled and slightly teased, hung straight and was tucked behind her ears. “That snow is out there taunting us,” she said. I couldn’t...
-Lake Orion, MI 2020 My mind tossed all night like ragweeds caught in a storm, thinking of these words Cut your hair tomorrow what my mother said to me after watching a video where yet another innocent black man was killed...
Jack has a job. It’s the sort of job where he doesn’t get to tell many people what to do or what not to do. Say he’s a travel agent or an insurance claim adjuster or a legal clerk, and he’s probably quite good at whatever this job is. Presume that...
In mathematics, the quotient is what you get when you divide one quantity by another. Thus, 3 into 36 yields the quotient 12. In Tracy O’Neill’s vertiginous new novel of information and its discontents, quotients are what remain when carefully...
“Remember Hoping Hospital?” I started my oral training class with a rhetorical question. Silence. The eighteen English majors, even the active speakers, had been quiet since the class began in early March. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the spring...
My best friends, Ruby and Paul, live about an hour north of Manhattan. On March 13, we planned a nice weekend—I would come up for a day or two, as I often do to get out of the city. On March 14, Covid-19 accelerated its embrace of New York. Paul and...
i: The Hunting Dog and the Watchdog Once there was a hunting dog and a watchdog who lived down the street across the river by a forest of meat Watchdog took up on the big wraparound porch every day with a rifle between his paws and when Hunting Dog...
Watched 8 videos on how to sew a fabric mask1 Added an extra 10 ml water to sourdough recipe (no other variables changed)2 Reread another handful of pages of The Bell Jar3 Listened to daily press conference (Raab again)4 Spoke to my family in...
This is a follow-up to Roxana Robinson’s earlier essay, “Trump & the Criminal Culture” If you ran a company, would you offer a product that would kill nearly half your customers? How good a business model is that? If you’re...
Standing before a table heaped with avocados, I watched the other shoppers toss bags of potatoes, onions, and apples into their carts. I was alone in my pursuit of just the right green-black fruit. When I found it, it wouldn’t last more than a day...
“Don’t look now.” I turned to the window and saw a Mercedes parked in the lot. My heart sank. “I told you not to look.” My roommate Romina rolled her eyes—at what, it was always hard to tell. “That thing’s probably worth two years of tuition. So...
I never thought I would drive for DoorDash. Then again, I never thought I would live during a pandemic either.I live in Healdsburg, a small California town in wine country. Last December, I quit my job in the wine industry, looking for a change...
