We played skelsies on the sidewalk. We dunked basketballs in the bottom rung of the fire escape ladders. We sunbathed on Tar Beach. We rocked to Block Party Sound Systems. We were sent by our moms to the corner bodegas to pick out dried saltfish from out of cardboard boxes. We saw old Puerto Rican…
How Do You Create Blacktrumpsupporters…….
Mix in a little paprika, some pepper, some salt, sea salt is best, a clove of garlic, onions, for tears of course, and then some of the tear drops as well, a bit of thyme, and some diced tomatoes….. Wait… Wait… Wrong Ingredients… My Bad… Let’s try again….. Mix in a hell of a lot…
This New Crown Heights Must Be Extra Nice For People Who Can’t See
It must be nice to not know shit. How wonderful it must be to be able to live in this world without ever being able to see. I would smile all the damn time if I could walk up and down Franklin Avenue just worrying about how long it will take the baristas to make…
When White Folks in Your Writing Workshop Tell You That Your Stuff Is too Dramatic… Too Violent… Too Much!
A Few Things I Shared With Another Writer About the Neighborhood I Grew Up In: That Alphabet City Life One night I came home and saw my friend’s father with a knife in his belly. Later on, someone told me it had to do with drugs, the fact that he was bleeding out on the…
She Does Not Question… (Reality-TV)
She looks at Hollywood-stars with their Malibu homes, their five cars, their everything. She watches back-to-back the inside-editions of their TMZ-lives, the gossip-filled-stories about their secret-affairs, their human-errors, their mindless-dreams. She looks at their thick lips, bloated lips, fakeassphony-lips. She looks at their artificial-curves with their artificial dreams. She is plugged into who slept with who and…
This Has Always Been Our America
I Children are being stolen from their parents at the border. Sons and daughters are being pulled away from their fathers and mothers. Some of them to never see their loved ones again. This is America. Greyhound buses are being boarded by ICE agents. People are being asked to show their IDs. Sidearms ever present….
If Today Was Your Last Day
Today If I said to you that today would be the last chance you would be able to do anything at all… Then what would be the things you would choose to do? Would you take one last ride on a rollercoaster? Dance with your lover or kiss your children good night? Would you tell…
Xavier Days – Late for Class
Fuck it. I couldn’t find my blazer. No school insignia for me. No school colors for me. Wrong kind of sweater today. They will say something to me. Maybe. Most of the time they leave me alone. Not because they don’t care. But because my mom is a beast. She will come at them like…
NO IRISHMEN.. NO DOGS.. NO WEST-INDIANS ALLOWED
My uncle once told me that while attending the London School of Economics, he used to see signs on the doors of houses that were renting flats that said… NO IRISHMEN ALLOWED… NO DOGS ALLOWED… NO WEST-INDIANS ALLOWED… At the time my uncle told me this, I had just come back from school in New York…
Your Greatest Treasure Is Your Time….
You wake up to find that there are oh so few hours in a day.. What will you do first? Is it about coffee, about toast, about the news, about prayer, about meditation or maybe it is above none of the above. Perhaps, you are about the morning run or biking in the park or…
