May 12, 2021 - From our poetry archives - Issue No. 2 - Autumn 2017 - Mervyn Taylor’s “Nostrand Avenue”.
NOSTRAND AVENUE
1.
Nostrand runs all the way from one
end of Brooklyn to the other, where
going with a girl into the Windjammer,
my friend met his wife coming out.
Round midnight the Kings County
crew gets off at Clarkson, speaking
of being so tired, of early retirement
and which handsome doctor they’d
like to take home, once the house
in Toco’s finished, and the old bones
hold up. They know every scar, every
bullet that goes off in East New York.
Nobody knows why the young man
who got on at Eastern Parkway cried
and cried until he got off at Empire.
Mother dead, father dead, who dead?
2.
Now where Nostrand intersects with
Fulton, down from where the crowd
crossed between Terrace and Fightback
on Saturday nights, the hipsters sit,
eating roti and drinking lattes. Upstairs
on Franklin, Evelyn’s mural has faded,
the bald proprietor gone, his parts
scattered all over the island. Preacher
closed his barbershop, where once
you could get anything, from suits
to shoes, and went back to Marabella,
moving into the old house his mother
left him, declaring war on the squatters.
He hardly recognized Suzy, who vanished
the night they danced in Frontrunners,
and he ran out on the avenue, looking.
May 10, 2021 - Nine days / the open city . . . by Jordan Myers
Rex Coffee,
Earl Grey
nine days,
nine years /
bright mornings,
forever nights
this city,
the open city . . .
May 9, 2021 - Althea & Donna’s “No More Fighting.” by Jordan Myers
As a Black man with ties to the Caribbean (my paternal grandfather was from Barbados), I’ve long wanted to immerse myself in the ethos, zeitgeist, and spiritual cadences of reggae. Over the last decade, although listening to classic reggae artists such as Toots and the Maytals, Peter Tosh, Niney the Observer, and the Heptones has helped me connect with my heritage and identity; these connections, often, have been too difficult to face.
Yet the difficulty hasn’t been a visceral sadness; or even one that’s easy to trace. It’s a difficultly that’s more akin with what pop-psychology would frame as a fear of being successful, while also blended with guilt. But where does the guilt and the fear of being successful come from?
The fact that these questions (as well their answers) have been so deeply-embedded within my psychology is a testament to how invasive these false dictates of what it means to be a Black man, have been. Yet to those dictates, I can now ––– for once and for all say: be gone. The mental chains, which I used to allow my heart and mind to wrap around what it feels like to listen to reggae –––– and by extension –––– to enjoy and be proud who I am, have been broken.
At last I have grown to a place where I can liberate myself from the cartoonish depictions of the Black male reggae artist. You’re familiar with this stereotype of a man, of course: he can only be found within a deep and thick cloud of marijuana smoke; and when he’s not high (though also, perhaps, while he is high as well) ––– he’s indiscriminately spreading “good vibes” and words of peace, unity, and love.
Although I’ve long known that these images were merely mischaracterizations of “the rasta,” still, I allowed them to push me away from enjoying reggae, and as result, from loving and honoring my heritage, my history, and myself. And even though I had listened to –––– and on a surface level understood –––– the imperatives of songs like Peter Tosh’s “Downpressor Man,” (Equal Rights) (1977), I just wasn’t ready to truly accept them, embrace them, and rally around their ideas.
However there is one album, start to finish, which I would call a bridge between where I was –––– wanting to enjoy reggae without any guilt or fear –––– to where I’ve now arrived. That album is Althea & Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking (1978). Here’s an album that I’ve played all the way through ––––time and time again, without any guilt or hesitation since the Autumn of 2016. And although I had heard the lead single, “Uptown Top Ranking,” in the early 2010’s, it wasn’t until six years later that I took the time to listen to the entire album. The album’s first track, “No More Fighting,” expresses so much of what I’ve always wanted to feel, and at long last, have grown to embody:
Alone I sit in deep meditation (deep meditation),
Wondering why the wicked still survive,
Killin' and stealin' is part of the daily life (daily life),
I wanna know, I wanna know, I wanna know,
When it's all gonna end.
No more fussin' and fightin',
We want no more, we want no more,
No more stealin' and back bittin',
We want no more, we want no more,
____
May 7, 2021 - From Issue No. 8 - 2020 by Jordan Myers
May 9, 2020
Everything Maria kept saying about time and the fact that we were running out of it made sense. She came rushing back from Kansas City two months after she had left and when she walked in the door of Hector’s apartment, we were all standing by the window and watching the city at dawn. She didn’t say anything at all, but instead sat down at a typewriter and began jabbing and punching at the keys in the same way that she did before she had left, except with more fury this time.
Later when we asked her what it was like being away from New York for sixty days she didn’t say anything at all, though for a long moment she
did stop typing –––– and looked over at us. We thought she’d tell of all the news from the other side of the George Washington Bridge (Hector even set down his cup of coffee and took a seat beside her), but all she did was pick up a book of matches. We watched the strike and flame; she lit another cigarette, and then we all went back to writing.
May 5, 2021 - The glow of Thirty-ninth Street / by Jordan Myers
The glow of Thirty-ninth Street,
the sound of lilacs & eastern ivy,
the quiet of a city in bloom at dawn.
May 3, 2021 - Perpetual by Jordan Myers
Words like Vermouth and Vermont, stores like Target
and Burlington Coat Factory, seasons like almost winter
and no longer spring. Stories like that time we went bowling
two days after the snowstorm in northeast Ohio, and those two weeks
we drove out west to Phoenix. Memories like you in the passenger seat
at dusk, taking photos at stoplights and drinking coffee from Vermont
with vermouth, which we found in November at a Target in your hometown /
right across the way from Burlington Coat Factory ––– & just before the snow.
May 2, 2021 - Elise Widerker’s “Born and Bred” + an Interview.
Born and Bred
Everyone I meet is surprised when I tell them, I'm born and bred in Brooklyn. Surprising, since I speak with a Brooklyn accent. I live near the Flatbush Avenue / Brooklyn College station, the same neighborhood I lived in during my youth. I live closest to the entrance between Flatbush Avenue and Nostrand Avenue, which is also known locally as The Junction.
Brooklyn College, my alma mater, sits on a lovely thirty-five-acre campus nearby. New construction and apartment buildings are abound along Flatbush, Glenwood and Farragut Road ––– easier, I think, for Brooklynites working in Manhattan to get to the island for work.
Everyone lives here: African-Americans, West Indians, Caucasians, Latinos, as well as Indian Americans. If there’s any clothing or food from anywhere in the world that you’d want, look here ––– and you’ll find it. Even with the changes, the street names (mostly) remain the same; and like me, plenty of original neighbors still walk the streets; visit the local shops; and dine at the local restaurants.
These streets are the same streets where I used to walk to class at Brooklyn College. And the 2/5 trains are the same trains that I once took to work into Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where I was working as an assistant preschool teacher.
No matter where I go, and no matter what I do around here, everything reminds me of my dear, departed parents, Harold and Sylvia. Even with the changes, there’s not a thing here that doesn’t make me feel close to them, knowing they traversed these same avenues, and walked these same streets. How many times, I wonder, did we go shopping along Church Avenue and Flatbush Avenue?
I like to reminisce about the old movie theater we visited, the ornate and lavish Loew’s Kings Theater on Flatbush and Beverley Road, which is now The Kings Theater. It now stands, fully renovated, an economic as well as an entertainment boost to the area, offering live shows.
The memories are a constant companion as I go about my day. And each and every day here, I feel the presence of my parents ––– who were both born and bred in New York as well. I keep cadence with their spiritual steps. I feel them guiding me as I make decisions, day in and day out; night and day. I could never live anywhere else. I’d miss those comforting feelings too much.
- Elise Widerker
_________________
Elise Widerker was born and raised in Brooklyn. A graduate of Brooklyn College in 1989, Elise graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in sociology. A former teacher and always a student of life, at the ripe age of fifty-two, she started pursuing her lifelong dream of acting and modeling. She is currently represented by We Speak Models. In addition, she’s a mature yet fledgling writer. A lifelong, diehard resident of Flatbush, Brooklyn, she is a proud mom to a daughter and son in law.
When we spoke with Elise toward the end of last month, we followed up on her earliest days in Brooklyn ––– literally, the evening she was born. “I was actually born in one of the biggest New York City snowstorms,” she offered, “February 6, 1961 –––– seventeen inches of snow.” Although she has spent nearly her entire life in Brooklyn, she did reveal that there was one year-long sojourn away from New York ––– in southern California. “I spent a year as part of a teacher's seminary, and then I got the opportunity to travel and I just thought, wow, California, I must go,” she offered, “And surprisingly my parents were okay with it, but I know they missed me.”
_________________
C.Q.: What can you tell us about the genesis of "Born and Bred”?
Elise: Since the pandemic began, due to the reduced opportunities for work in acting, I've been writing every day, just to keep my mind active. And when I came across the ad for Curlew Daily pieces about New York, I just thought, that's my favorite topic, New York, and I was born here and bred here, so I thought I'd give it a shot. It's straight from my heart. It's all about the memories of being in the same city that I grew up in.
A lot of people have left, people around my age ––– they've made an exodus to wherever they went. But I enjoy being here. I love it and I have a million memories and I could go on and on about them. A million memories from each street and each store.
I follow a lot of these online groups, where they show you the old pictures –––– of how the streets looked back then, and it makes me laugh, because some of those places I remember. Not back to the 1800's, but some of the images from the seventies ––– they're very heartwarming. And I can think back to where I was at the time, and what I was doing. I like it.
C.Q.: What's the longest time that you've ever been away from Brooklyn?
Elise: I actually lived in California for a year. I was nineteen and I had an opportunity to go out there. I loved it. I actually could have stayed ––– I have a soft spot for California. I don't like the earthquakes, they scare me, but I missed home too much. I really missed home.
This was obviously before cell phones and all of that, so you had to pick a time when you could call long distance ––– and when the phone rates were cheaper and all of that. But it was difficult. And it was on a landline and I shared the apartment with a few girls, so I had to pick my spot and my time; it was just a lot. But I loved it there. It was in southern California.
C.Q.: What led to the opportunity?
Elise: It was a teaching opportunity; I was teaching at the time. I was very young and I had just started working in a Jewish school. I did a year as part of a teacher's seminary, and then I got the opportunity to travel and I just thought, wow, California, I must go. And surprisingly my parents were okay with it, but I know they missed me.
So I would write out letters to them, with stamps and envelopes, but it was just hard being away from home.
C.Q.: So that was the longest, a sojourn in California for a year.
Elise: Yes. A year in California, back in 1980-81.
C.Q.: What's most important to you right now?
Elise: I have to start with my family. I have one daughter; she's very precious to me. She's recently married, so she and her husband are very important to me. Also my sister and brother, and of course my parents. Unfortunately I lost my dad last year. My mother passed away about fourteen years ago, so it's my sister and my brother and myself. So they're all very important to me.
In terms of myself and my career, the whole pandemic really blew a hole in that. So I'm trying to fill that hole –––– I got my vaccine, and I'm trying to creep back into life as we know it, but it's been hard. So I've been writing more, just because I don't know where things are going to go, as far as acting opportunities in the near future.
I'm with an agency, We Speak Models, and they're a wonderful agency and they work with people who are not normally represented in media. All types of people of different races and genders, and in my case, age ––– people who you don't normally see.
They're very good, but it's hard now. We're all sort of creeping back, and the opportunities are just now starting to come back. I don't know what's going to happen with that, but it’s important to me. I'm almost at what you would call retirement age, but I've never had a linear work history. It's always been up and down, so I don't even know what retirement is.
C.Q.: What scares you the most about making art, or more specifically about acting?
Elise: You want to be well received, but again I have to mention my age. I really do a lot of things that I like now, in every facet of life. And I don't worry too much about people's opinions, which is a really nice part of getting older ––– one of the nicest parts. And I mean that sincerely ––– I really don't worry too much about what other people think of me or my work much anymore.
I'm more focused on taking on roles and work that’s meaningful for me, and not just any old thing. When I first started out I would just do whatever, but now I'm staring to have less fear about new work coming in; and I don’t just take a role because it’s available and offered to me.
I started this career when I was fifty-two; I just kind of jumped into it. So fear isn’t really too much of a thing with me. I don’t know why. It was just something that I wanted to do, so I just stared doing it.
And it took off really nicely. Between the acting and the modeling –––– I wanted acting more, but then when I started getting opportunities to do modeling, no one was really more surprised than I was. They were looking for mature models, and I said, okay, I don't know how mature I am, but here it goes. And it’s been a lot of fun.
I just hope that I can keep up the momentum, despite the pandemic. I’m always trying to reinvent myself. I just turned sixty in February and I just thought, I have to have something for the new decade. So I’ve been writing more.
C.Q.: That makes sense. Ever-expanding. What does home mean to you?
Elise: Home is where I shut everything out. I'm living alone now. I used to live with my daughter. We were in this small space together, and she and I were like one. Somehow we managed to do it for so many years. But now it’s just me, so it’s my little sanctuary.
C.Q.: I know you said you have millions of New York stories, so I know it may be kind of hard to pull from so many, but is there one specific New York story or anecdote that comes to mind in this moment?
Elise: I could tell you about when I was born. I was actually born in one of the biggest New York City snowstorms: February 6, 1961 –––– seventeen inches of snow. I think we've surpassed it since then, but at the time it was one of the biggest. And my father's car was snowed in, and as the legend goes, my mother –––– she repeated this many times –––– had to climb over the snow and they had to flag down a car that had chains on its tires. I always thought it was a fire truck, but later my dad said it was a sanitation truck, and they helped my parents get a taxi. And that's how they got my mom to the hospital the night I was born.
C.Q.: That's amazing; you picked a great night to begin your journey. Is there anyone you keep in touch with from those earliest days in Brooklyn?
Elise: I am in touch with a few old friends and it’s nice that we share bonds that were formed many many years ago. One of the girls –––– my mother and her mother were friends –––– and they were pregnant at the same time, and so we feel like we’re friends from the womb. It's a nice feeling. There’s something to be said for that. There were just so many things that happened. I don't even know where to start.
April 30, 2021 - All day rain, and wind / by Jordan Myers
All day rain, and wind /
glints of sunlight across
the East River . . . calm /
the last embers, of April.
April 27, 2021 - Just be still, you want to say / to the city. by Jordan Myers
Just be still, you want to say
to the city. Be gentle. Don’t
put your dukes up so often
/ have a heart; & watch over
the woman in a beige jumper
with aviator sunglasses who’s
walking right now –––– west
along 15th Street. More dusk
& dawn. Less sunrise & sunset.
April 26, 2021 - Breezeways & harmonics / by Jordan Myers
Breezeways
& harmonics /
The J train
from Marcy
to Delancey /
over the
East River
and back.
Sunlight /
from rooftops
a dream at dusk /
a city at rest ––––
between beats
between breaths.
April 25, 2021 - The Kia Soul in “Alien 2” Green - North Along Eighth Avenue. by Jordan Myers
At eleven-thirty this morning, a man in cowboy boots and light grey skinny khakis and a grey t-shirt was driving a Kia Soul, colored in “Alien 2” Green, up Eighth Avenue near Fifty-fifth Street. Although it’s unclear whether the rear door of the hatchback was already open once the vehicle turned onto Eighth Avenue, or whether the rear door flew open shortly thereafter, it is clear that the door, at some point, did open.
Once the door became ajar the Soul travelled less than two blocks before a large black suitcase spilled out from the vehicle and landed in the middle of Eighth Avenue. For a while the vehicle kept driving, which prompted a series of reactions from New Yorkers who had witnessed these events, many of whom were staring at the suitcase in the middle of Eighth Avenue, and engaging in a combination of waiting, wondering, and/or hoping that another vehicle would not collide with and run over the luggage.
One man in a maroon pullover sweater and denims, placed his fingers between his lips so that he could whistle loudly, whilst using his other arm in attempt to wave down the Soul’s driver. Several others pointed at the suitcase; and a group of four who were walking and passing by the scene, began laughing.
Moments later the Soul’s driver emerged from the vehicle ––– clad in cowboy boots and skinny khakis ––– and began scurrying south down Eighth Avenue, back toward the suitcase. He took careful and quick steps as he moved alongside cars parked between the avenue’s bike lane and the multiple lanes of moving traffic. His scurrying allowed him to reach the suitcase without the luggage sustaining further damage or disruption.
Upon holding the bag in his arms, and removing it from the middle of the road, he waved and nodded a thank you to those who had assisted. He then began scurrying again, returning to his parked vehicle, placing the suitcase –––– securely ––– into the Soul’s trunk once more, closing the rear door, returning to the driver’s side door, entering the vehicle, and then driving away ––– north along Eighth Avenue.
