February 26, 2021 - All the signs from the harbor at the end of the island / that I showed you were real. by Jordan Myers
All the signs from the harbor at the end of the island
that I showed you were real. We had to wait until April
before the night’s skyline was clear enough to see across
the ocean. Spring had this way of arriving, slow, steady,
then all at once the sun would find its place in the morning
sky. We needed the wind; we needed the new leaves of May.
And even if the island city was a mirage, we needed the harbor.
February 24, 2021 - Twelve days ago / I paused for a while / at Seventy-Fifth & Madison. by Jordan Myers
Twelve days ago
I paused for a while
at Seventy-Fifth
and Madison:
a giant and sprawling bus passed by –––––––––
February 22, 2021 - From the vault - Orlando Magic @ Chicago Bulls - December 31, 2008. by Jordan Myers
I remember watching this game between semesters while at home in Indianapolis. A lazy New Year’s Eve matinee, the Bulls were at home against the Orlando Magic; and I was at home, away from my first year of law school in Des Moines, Iowa. I think I had practiced guitar right before the game. The details grow less and less clear each day.
But I remember watching this game. I remember the Bulls trailing the entire game –––– pulling close, and then falling behind again –––– pulling close, and then falling behind again ––––– pulling close, and then falling behind again. But then after a while, the Magic just ran away with it. I remember being twenty-two and wondering what would happen with my life; and feeling as though anything and everything still remained possible.
The television in the kitchen of my parents’ house was so small, and that was where I watched this game. Nine years later they’d sell the place. But I remember seeing the crowd at the United Center –––– watching people shuffle out of the arena early as the Bulls fell farther and farther behind in the fourth quarter –––– and feeling as though I might one day live in Chicago as well –––– by the time I was twenty-five, perhaps. I remember watching this game. I remember thinking that I might be at one of those games, a few years from then.
February 21, 2021 - The sound of those trains I heard two decades later / from the window of my apartment on Ninth Avenue. by Jordan Myers
The sound of those trains I heard two decades later
from the window of my apartment on Ninth Avenue.
February 19, 2021 - Don’t overlook the grocery stores. by Jordan Myers
One thing you can do for entertainment on a Friday night in a pandemic Manhattan ––– that’s relatively low cost, and can keep you going for hours ––– is grocery shopping. The later, the better. For instance, Morton Williams, at Eleventh Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, is open until eleven at night seven days a week, which is a bit crazy, though also, in its own way ––– inspiring.
Here is a gigantic grocery store that’s incredibly well-stocked and well-lit that one could spend an hour or two browsing around –––– nearly on his own, as there are so few people out –––– on any night of the week, wondering where everyone else went, and yet . . . still –––- it’s open late.
And although eleven wouldn’t be late under normal Manhattan circumstances; for a grocery store –––– and for a grocery store in a pandemic Manhattan –––– eleven feels like an after party. If you want public entertainment at an indoor facility on the island of Manhattan on a Friday or Saturday night (or any night of the week), don’t overlook the grocery stores. They’re there for you, just waiting.
February 17, 2021 - Sleeping through crimson mornings / by Jordan Myers
Sleeping through crimson mornings /
imaginary waffles for brunch / reading
neo-political fiction at dusk: the summer
keeps going. Learning to live entire months
in reverse -–––– how to bend and sway
while crossing Tenth Avenue and walking
west . . . with Earl Grey tea / over a cloudy
and sweltering summer morning, in July.
February 15, 2021 - Micro book reviews: Arthur Russell on Patti Smith’s "Just Kids" - Chapter Three, Pages 166-167.
I may not have mentioned that I’m reading Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids, which is a chronicle of her life in NYC 1965 till not sure when because I haven’t finished. I think she’s a gifted narrator, and that her poetic sensibilities emerge constantly. Here’s a passage about her time with Jim Carroll, author of Basketball Diaries:
Jim and I spent a lot of time in Chinatown. Every outing with him was a floating adventure, riding the high summer clouds. I liked to watch him interact with strangers. We would go to Hong Fat because it was cheap and the dumplings were good, and he would talk to the old guys. You ate what they brought to the table or you pointed to someone’s meal because the menu was in Chinese. They cleaned the tables by pouring hot tea on them and wiping it up with a rag. The whole place had the fragrance of oolong. Sometimes Jim just picked up an abstract thread of conversation with one of these venerable-looking men, who would then lead us through the labyrinth of their lives, through the Opium Wars and the opium dens of San Francisco. And then we would tramp from Mott to Mulberry to Twenty-third Street, back in our time, as if nothing had ever happened.
Of course, the ending is such a wonderful surprise. The tramp through the physical grid of the city becomes a journey through time, which is wonderful enough, but the last phrase, “as if nothing had ever happened” illuminates the experience, casts a kind of backward, confirmatory wonderfulness on the interesting, but seemingly ordinary, details she’s just shared. And note how she builds to that poetic turn starting with the tea to clean the tables, the smell of oolong, and then the assonance of ells in “lead us through the labyrinth of their lives” followed by the double “opium” of “Opium Wars and the opium dens.” And, too, in the geography bit, the evocative ems of “Mott” and “Mulberry” yielding to the colder, numerical “Twenty-third Street,” which mirrors the march from magical past to bland present. And yet none of these devices is obtrusive, none calls attention to the wit or cleverness of the poet. There is humility in her craft.
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Arthur Russell lives in Nutley, New Jersey, where he works as a lawyer. He is the winner of both Providence Fine Arts Work Center and Syracuse University fellowships as well as Brooklyn Poets’ YAWP Poem of the Year for 2015 and YAWPER of the Year for 2016.
His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Paterson Literary Review, Prelude, Yellow Chair Journal, Muse-Pie Press, Shot Glass Journal, Brooklyn Poetry Anthology (2017), the Red Wheelbarrow #9, and Wilderness House Literary Review.
February 14, 2021 - If you write, you evolve. by Jordan Myers
If you write, you evolve. And every spring the snow melts; and the trees’ branches find leaves again. For years, you thought you were the snow, enjoying flurries of writing spells that grew into nor’easter storms. Then came the eternal years of a writing life lived like leaves: ideas and lines sprouting anew with each warm sun. Then strong and steady, your writing life became the tree itself: its limbs and branches, its roots and trunk and leaves –––– basking in the sun and swaying in the wind, bending but never broken. Then for a while, you decided you were all of those things: the snow, the leaves, the wind, and the tree. But then you decided to just write; but then you decided to evolve.
February 12, 2021 - From Issue No. 8 - 2020 - Robin Romeo’s “Old Haunts”
Old Haunts
- Robin Romeo
I’m surprised to see Washington Mews—me, lost
on a path lost to memory. Cobblestones seem not to
have worn. It’s been a while since horseshoes chipped
away at the flinty stone sending sparks out like little
short-lived creatures happy in their moment’s existence.
It must have been a sight—lantern flames riding
convection to tallness & collapse over & over.
I would have been absorbed in the flicker,
& worry that wheels might fall off the way they seem
always to indicate they might. Strangers still dart at you
as you enter the park, to whisper sales pitches in their
language of ambiguity—just in case—as they pass.
We’re days into the semester. Levity dozes in back
rows of classrooms beyond the perimeter.
Eighth Street feels more staid; no grit & scuff
on buildings squat on the sidewalk tilting streetward.
February 10, 2021 - Issue No. 8 - 2020 - Contributors.
Kate Alsbury is a writer and marketing consultant. Her creative work has appeared in journals like Frogpond and Modern Haiku, along with several anthologies.
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Jade Brown is a fiction writer and poet based in New York City. Her work focuses on liberating women who are shoved in dehumanizing categories, with emphasis on women of color. Jade’s heavy use of allegories in her writing brings light to social construct, racial dynamic, and feminine opulence.
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Kellie Coppi, EDD grew up on Long Island and always dreamed of living in New York City. After getting accepted Early Admissions into NYU Tisch, that dream was achieved. But now, she has another dream, to move back to Long Island to be closer to family and out of the hustle and bustle.
With a fondness for everything Victorian and Turn of the century, Kellie finds time to delve into nostalgia when she’s not writing about people and the lack of common sense that too frequently permeates today’s world. Give her a dog and a book and she’s set.
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Mira feels more comfortable calling herself a person who writes than a writer. She is a recent immigrant to New York where she moved, against all good judgement, for adventure.
When she’s not struggling to get by, she’s struggling to get by. You can often find her at free events, or at her neighborhood Riverbank State Park, or you really can’t find her because she’s exploring some quiet corner in Upper Manhattan or New Jersey. Plus she’s lacking in social media.
Having spare time is the closest she comes to having a religion-- she uses it to make film and sound collages, take long walks, talk to strangers, and think about how weird it is to speak of oneself in third person. You can hear her sound collages at: https://soundcloud.com/mira-fisher.
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Kate Ginna was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., she returned home and enrolled at the William Esper Studio, where she is currently finishing her second and final year of the full-time program. She is also a member of The Woolgatherers Theater Group: www.thewoolgatherers.com. When she’s not taking classes at the studio or auditioning, Kate works as a creative assistant to two writers and writes her own material.
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Julia Hanson is a creative producer and writer living in Williamsburg. She studied English Literature and Poetry at Dickinson College.
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Elizabeth Lerman
Elizabeth Lerman is a creative writer based in New York City. A graduate from the University of Vermont, where she earned her B.A in Film Studies and English Literature, Elizabeth is passionate about forging strong female voices and diverse narratives.
In her writing she focuses on the significance of small moments and the space they hold in both her thoughts and those of her characters. Elizabeth currently lives in Brooklyn where she is working, slowly but surely, on her first novel.
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Rahil Najafabadi is a multimedia artist and writer from Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Most of her work includes the elements of her hometown in setting, theme, and style. She hopes to live in New York and pursue a career in creative writing.
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Writer, artist, educator, collaborator, curious citizen of the world, humble student of life, seeker of light, documenter of healing. Rebecca Nison is the author and illustrator of If We’d Never Seen the Sea. Her fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have been published in a number of magazines and journals.
As a part-time assistant professor at Parsons School of Design, Rebecca teach students the power of discovering their voices through writing. I received my MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from The New School and my BFA in Creative Writing, with a minor in Visual Arts, from Emerson College.
She recently trained in Usui Reiki Levels 1 and 2 with Aki Hirata-Baker and Manu del Prete. She will be studying hypnotherapy with Shauna Cummins at the Divine Feminine School of Hypnosis in 2021.
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Samuel C. O’Brient is a Freelance Journalist and Content Strategist. A native of Western Massachusetts, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics & Political Science from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Science in International Politics from Trinity College Dublin.
Samuel describes himself as a “hopeless news junkie” who has covered a wide variety of topics from college sustainability movements to the global effects of the trade war but whose primary interest will always be found at the intersections of politics and the media.
In non-pandemic times, he can be found writing in coffee shops. Samuel’s has been featured on venues such as The University Times, TUN (The University Network), and U.S. Resist News. He currently serves as Political Editor for Curiosity Shots and blogs at MySideoftheAisle.com.
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Alexandra Pauley is the author of Semi-Sweet Sarcophagus, Wacky Wonders Chocolate Boutique Cookbook, On The Verge Of Being Homeless: A Guide To Wise Decisions, The ‘New Homeless’, and other works of fiction and non-fiction.
An advocate to the homeless population, she is currently volunteering with Sleepy Herd, Inc. Alexandra has a B.A. in Psychology, and is a Certified Science of Happiness Specialist with Hapacus.
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Robin Romeo calls Harlem home. He earned a BA from Vermont College, where he studied literature and creative writing. His poems are forthcoming in the Caribbean Writer and he was a Brooklyn Poets’ fellow and Yawper of the Year for 2020.
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Arthur Russell lives in Nutley, New Jersey, where he works as a lawyer. He is the winner of both Providence Fine Arts Work Center and Syracuse University fellowships as well as Brooklyn Poets’ YAWP Poem of the Year for 2015 and YAWPER of the Year for 2016.
His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Paterson Literary Review, Prelude, Yellow Chair Journal, Muse-Pie Press, Shot Glass Journal, Brooklyn Poetry Anthology (2017), the Red Wheelbarrow #9, and Wilderness House Literary Review.
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Sarah is a New Yorker at soul, teaching English and studying film in Uruguay. Doing all the things to become a multimedia journalist. She published her first book, “core collection: poems about eating disorders” with Adelaide Books in 2019. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19663814.Sarah_E_Simon Instagram: @ssimon8; Twitter: @smileformebabyg.
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Jamie Soltis is an actor with a special affinity for comedy. She has appeared in shows like Difficult People and the Blacklist and currently works with the Episcopal Actors Guild, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that provides charitable assistance and career support for performers of all faith, and none. Via Blog O’ Beer (Can Beer Make me Friends?), she writes about bars and restaurants in and around New York, NY.
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Karlton Miko Tyack was born and raised in West Los Angeles. He spent summers with family all over New England and studied art history in Massachusetts. Consequently, he’s a fan of the Patriots as well as the Dodgers and the Kings. He also loves the outdoors, dogs, riding horses, and Christmas time.
Karlton worked in the art gallery world for ten years, and moved to New York for an opportunity with one of the city’s auction houses. New York has quickly become his favorite city. He resides on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
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Nawi Ukabiala is a public international law practitioner and associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York.
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February 8, 2021 - There are men who stand inside of steel castles in and around Manhattan. by Jordan Myers
There are men who stand inside of steel castles in and around Manhattan. These castles are adorned with snacks –––– candy, gum, mints, and cough drops; as well as reading material –––– magazines, newspapers, and small books of crossword puzzles. Beside these adornments, often, these castles also display and offer beverages, which are stored in refrigerators with see-through glass doors. These doors are see through so that those who patronize these steel castles may determine the beverage selections available, without having to inquire with the men tasked with standing inside of these steel castles.
Though standing is far from all that the men who work inside of these steel castles do. They also hold rank ––– observing and monitoring the mood and feel of the expanses of city life just outside of and beyond their steel castles. And also, when events and circumstances require, they pull rank –––taking steps to assure their own safety, and also taking measures to protect and preserve the economic viability of these castles.
From within these steel castles, the eyes of the men who stand within them may always look out upon and across the sidewalks and pavilions before them. In this way, they can be ––– though they are not always, a constant set of eyes and ears upon the sidewalks and the streets of this city. If you have been in Manhattan at all –––– and ever before, then you have seen these steel castles.