Sparrow | The Sun Magazine #4

Sparrow

Sparrow lives in a double-wide trailer in Phoenicia, New York. He has published eleven books, including Small Happiness & Other Epiphanies. Sparrow’s new band, Truffles, is an acoustic anarchist quartet. It seems to be a hit. You can follow him on Twitter: @Sparrow14.

— From July 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Bananacake

We bought our rabbit seven years ago from a Frenchwoman named Daphne who owned the Country Inn restaurant on Route 28. Daphne bred two types of rabbits: those for soup, and those for pets. Violet chose ours from the pet bin: a white female with gray “points,” meaning its ears, paws, and tail were gray. The rabbit was four months old and seven inches long.

February 2009
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Buy One, Get One Free

A Journal Of My Presidential Campaign

I am the first pro-Sudoku candidate for president in American history. Sudoku, as you may know, is a Japanese number puzzle found in most newspapers (except the New York Times). It consists of a square of eighty-one boxes in which the player must inscribe numbers so that each row contains 1 through 9.

December 2008
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My God Journal

Tonight was my third Christmas Eve service. My friend Diana was playing the organ and invited me into the choir loft with her. I sat looking down at the pews, which were two-thirds full. These people had braved the midnight cold of the Catskills to praise the birth of a king in a barn.

August 2008
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

You Are An Awful Parent

Suddenly you have a crisis: You’re tired of parenting. You’ve had it with this kid. You would give her back, but there’s no one to give her to. It’s too humiliating to offer her up for adoption. I am a fucking awful parent, you think. And you are a fucking awful parent. Join the club. There are about 150 million of us in the U.S.A. at the moment.

February 2008
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

How To Make Money In Your Car

Now, you might think, A car is too small for a convention. But this is true only of most conventions. There are some conventions that we never hear of, because of their smallness. For example, the Committee to Erect a Monument to Gerald Ford in Washington, D.C., could easily hold its convention inside a rather compact Pontiac. I encourage you to “think inside the box” (in this case, an extremely small box).

August 2007
Poetry

Eight Love Poems

We are all named / out of love — for / an uncle, a cousin, / a dead violinist. / Often we forget / the love in our names.

from “Named”

June 2007
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

I Was A Guantánamo Prisoner

I walked slowly up Mill Hill Road in Woodstock, New York. A rope tied my feet together; another bound my hands. A third rope, around my waist, was attached to the woman in front of me. A black hood covered my face. The rest of my wardrobe was an orange jumpsuit, like the ones worn by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

March 2007
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Fighting CIS

Last night my mother told me, “We just got DSL” — a high-speed Internet hookup for the computer. As we talked, we discovered that neither of us knew what DSL stands for. (Subsequent research revealed that it means “digital subscriber line.” Of course, it is also “LSD” backward.)

September 2006
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Stupid Design

Fundamentalist Christians are leading a movement to teach “intelligent design” in our public schools, as an alternative to evolution. 

May 2006
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Flood

It’s difficult to remember the sequence of events that led us here. Everything came so quickly. The first warning was when Perdita called, saying, “I hear they are evacuating people from Phoenicia.” Heavy rains and spring thaw were causing the Esopus River to overflow its banks.

February 2006
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Why I Am Not President

On January 19, 2004, the day of the Iowa caucus, I decided to run for president. Perhaps, in my tiny way, I reasoned, I can prevent America from becoming a Jesus-flavored neofascist empire. So I announced to the world (or, at least, to the portion of it that is on my e-mail address list) my candidacy for the Republican nomination. My campaign had begun.

January 2006
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Looking Like Osama And Other Confessions

Some lucky people look like Brad Pitt or Sarah Jessica Parker. It is my fate to resemble Osama bin Laden.

March 2005
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