The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
By Corbett Buchly the photograph is false
pretending to capture the gentle curve of kindness
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The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
5 a.m., 10 a.m., 2 p.m., 12 a.m., the sight is much the same.
Behold, the faithful shop of city yore, but still like the old days in this borough. Not yet transformed by the wave of corporate magicians and their wands summoning chain after chain and franchise after franchise in Manhattan. We prefer the grime and grit here. The Brooklyn bodega welcomes you from Greenpoint to Bed-Stuy to Sunset Park to Sheepshead Bay, from Williamsburg to Crown Heights to Canarsie. Enter the temple of pork rinds, popcorn, and plantain chips. Row after row of sodas and energy drinks and beers beckon you. Buy one snack or many and the boring necessities, too: toilet paper, bleach, sponges, tissues, dish detergent. Stay clean at any hour, or clean enough. You don’t owe your landlord sparkles. Order your lamb over rice, your pastrami on rye, your sopping mozzarella sticks. The wait respects a New Yorker’s pace. Go, go, go, go, go, go. The guy grills faster than the subway during rush hour. Chop, chop, sizzle-- “Roll or hero?” “White sauce?” “Hot sauce?” Time to rush out, stuff your mouth as you bound through the streets. Say good-bye for now, until back you come. Always come back. The bodega is a humble place. A familiar place. A place so entwined with thoughts of home. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
By Shontay Luna Looking outside into the
urban yonder, I whisper to myself - ‘All of this could’ve been mine.’ I say it to my younger self - my optimistic, pre-kids - thirty pounds thinner self. She appears to me as a whisper in my dreams, but only in the ones that make no sense at all. She, who questioned the world the same way her older counter- part now questions herself. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
By Donna Pucciani Some day, the ozone will return,
predictable as lark-rise in the morning, a shield against the sun’s torturous rays. For decades, we have banished her, our passion for oil having ground us under her vanishing feet. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
By Donna Pucciani Tonight the polluted moon glows
bright as a black-robed orange witch riding in on her autumn broom a month too early, sweeping away the shards of ozone. A transient in the sky’s dark wood, right out of Dante, she’s the portent of a dried-up harvest, a smoky inferno, the remnants of Canadian wildfires. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
By Wayne Russell Perched on the brink of annihilation,
think tanks forged in steel and blood, we have sold ourselves into slavery- dumbed down and drowning in pools of cyberspace wasteland. Wars waged, fought and lost, humanity was a myth- The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
By Peter Mladinic My homeroom teacher taught wood shop,
a useful thing to learn, wood. I never took wood shop. Homeroom wasn’t much. We sat, he called our names, then we headed out for classes. I never saw him work a lathe or set a spirit level, with its yellow bubble, on a two-by-four. I let carpenters do it, then pay with Mastercard. |