Felicia
By Ilana Garon
Her name was Felicia, and she was my student during my second year teaching public high school in the Bronx, when I was 23. Her parents were having a reverse custody battle over who didn’t have to take care of her. The odds of her being totally screwed up by this were astronomical. But she smiled. She played. She said funny, witty things. She teased me for things I had never told the students (hell, things I was wary of even thinking)—“Miss, you blush whenever Chris walks into the room. He’s cute, isn’t he?”—and …
Distrust the Inner Voice: A Prayer and a Lament
By Alisa Slaughter
It’s late; I’m listening for the marauding bear. Maybe it’s because the summer is so cold this year in Oregon and things aren’t ripening, but my mother says he’s unusually active, more persistent than the average bear in his raids on gardens and bird feeders. After she was robbed by a neighborhood meth addict, my mother put a motion detector on her garage light and a lock on the inside of her wood bin, where the tweaker got in. The police caught him, but he’d already sold the pearls my late father gave her, on eBay. I’m …
Wingin’ It
By Jessica Machado
In the seventh grade, I asked my father to take me to see Winger, a glam rock band whose greatest hit, “She’s Only Seventeen,” included the lyrics, “Daddy says she’s too young, but she’s old enough for me.” My father said yes, even though the concert was on a school night and he had no idea what Winger was.
When we arrived at the show that evening, the parking lot was a black sea of T-shirts and spandex. It was August of 1989 in Honolulu, and here at the Aloha Tower concert hall, sweat was about to …
Poor Her Soul
BY MIRA PTACIN
Nicole Carpenter used to go through my city like a walking middle finger. She fought, smoked, dipped, drank and skipped school, and by the time she finally reached her junior year of high school, she altogether dropped out. I met her some years ago in my hometown of Battle Creek, the Cereal Capitol of the world (think: Kellogg’s Cornflakes).
Nicole wore sandy blond cornrows that dropped to her waist and wrapped around her like seaweed. She’d sway her head side to side and fling those braids behind her shoulders, rake back the strays with two acrylic …
One Day
BY ANNABEL SMITH
We arrive in the nameless village early, when the morning light is still thick and golden, marred only by the dark smudge of hills on the horizon. Doctors, nurses, dentists, support staff: a team of ten, we’ve flown into the Dominican Republic for a week of one-day stands. Day four, this is our fourth and final village. Like most foreigners, we’ve brought a sense of adventure and spare memory cards. Unlike them, we won’t be staying at luxury resorts or visiting golf courses. We have come to do good, to make a difference.
Our local partners are waiting …
Pinheads No More
The Quest for Punk Rock on the Road to Ruin
BY CHRIS GRILLO
It must have been ‘89 because I was working at Blockbuster at the time. I remember the oppressive fluorescent lighting, the nauseatingly sweet scent of overly buttered popcorn and, of course, the hideous business casual uniforms—all of these flashbacks pummeled by the screeching tires and gunfire soundtrack of some action movie blaring out of the mounted TVs. Not sure what its hours …
A Report from Kenya: Parsing a Native Son
BY CHARLES A. MATATHIA
This piece was written just before the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America on January 20, 2009.
Has Change Really Come?
Thousands crowd around transistor radios in Nairobi and all around Africa from Goma to Mogadishu. Far away in Chicago, a once upon a time “skinny kid with a funny name” stands before an ecstatic crowd. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,” he begins, “who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive …
A Cub in Winter
BY LUIS H. FRANCIA
Her skin tells the truth: full, curvesome, with hints of over-ripeness, and yet glorious, glorious. My own skin, alert as a prairie dog.
Those were my salad days, the days of my early summer, they were the days of her early autumn. And it was winter that January, cold, brutal, my first in the realm, tempering the jubilation of an unrepentant ex-acolyte who, by moving to faithless Manhattan, had strained, if not broken, the thick leash of church and home. I needed sex as an aperient, to expunge still powerful strictures from my system. I needed symphonies …
A Day at the Dentist
BY ERICA SILBERMAN
It’s just after rush hour on a warm July morning and I’m picking up my mother at Grace’s place in Bridgeport. I have to work at five-thirty in Manhattan and I’m praying that the traffic will behave and I will be able to take my mother to the dental clinic at Norwalk Hospital, bring her back to Bridgeport and make it back to the city on time. I drove to my father’s place in Connecticut after work the night before because I am panicked that I’ll miss the appointment, and it makes more sense …
Memento Mori
BY BARBARA SUEKO MCGUIRE
It’s raining cats and dogs. Thunder, lightening—by California standards, practically a hurricane. The clouds are so thick that even if the sun hadn’t set, it’d be dark. But it has—it’s eight o’clock, so in a sense, it’s twice as black as it’d normally be. Regardless, when Bob Harris gets a call from Long Beach Airport wondering if he’d be interested in flying three people—a man and two women—over to Burbank, five bucks each, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Sure,” he says, and is out the door and on his way in less than five minutes.
Bob’s …
Salon Supports
Recently Posted
- Rob Roberge
- Rus Bradburd
- Emily Rapp
- Sarah Gerkensmeyer
- Chicago | May 19, 2013
- NYC | May 19, 2013
- Robert Perisic
- Molly McNett
- Patricia Ann McNair
- Daniel S. Libman
Categories
Archives
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- December 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- January 2006
