Tag Archives: Brooklyn
Legend
Summer in Brooklyn, hydrant dreaming in graffiti– legends of childhood.
Vintage
Brooklyn, 1957, shotgun postcard glory and grain of bygone, brick-backed, bathing-capped great aunts I never knew, Josie and Anna-Mae, sirens modeling sass and moxie on a hot summer’s day before the sun went down.
Mystery
Because we never met, you will forever and always remain the fretted girl behind double crossed scratched glass square rooted Brooklyn train station blues, the soundless frozen fragment of a life running on and outward bound.
Flint
I also saw Anya on that trip, though our meeting was unplanned. I was on the subway platform waiting for the train when I spotted a thin girl in torn jeans and a bright green tank-top walking in my … Continue reading
No Man’s Brooklyn
I have started working on my new novel: No Man’s Brooklyn. A return to the bones of childhood, and to tangled roots. A return to the gritty lore of Bensonhurst.
Digging for Air
There was always plenty of tomorrow-talk, bright ribbons of noise amounting to nothing. What we would do, where we would go, how we’d become this or that. We erected fragile monuments to ourselves, and expected others to pay their respects, … Continue reading
Birth of a Prologue
They say you can’t go home again. I don’t know who “they” are, but apparently this mysterious phantom collective is well-stocked in facts, aphorisms and guidelines. I was going home again, to Brooklyn, though the notion of return, … Continue reading
Summer Song
At the edge of a remote island, (sirens in the distance) modeling jigsaw scars, cracked veins, and an oily sheen, a fast fade dream, a scorched mirage, occurs every evening like clockwork. Walter, jangling his bell, shouting: Good Humor Man, … Continue reading
My Grandmother, My Chaplin
Excerpt from Raking the Dust, honoring the birthdays of my grandmother (April 15th) and Charlie Chaplin (April 16th). In times of hardship and heartache my grandmother would recite St. Teresa’s Prayer or sing Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” in a warbly and … Continue reading
The Urban Way
Boy on street corner brown bag in his hand, crinkling– Yo, I’ve gotta piss.
