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Bodies

I fell in love and then I went shopping for groceries. We were out of everything. There was milk and cold cereal. Bread. Boring.

Who Sees What

One morning I came upon him in one of the more remote parts of the park. He’d spread his sleeping bag out smoothly, and he was about to get inside. He was wearing his knitted cap. I approached him from behind, and hoped he didn’t see me seeing him. Going to bed is not supposed to happen in broad daylight in front of strangers.

Homelessness

A huge beach umbrella, a Methodist church parking lot, a fire hydrant

Giving Away Gardens

A Crip gang member approached the woman for whom I was building a vegetable garden — an old woman on welfare, an ex-prostitute, ex-waitress, ex-chicken-butchering plant worker. He said he was tired, pimping was hard work.

Dignity And Other Staples

Eating In The Soup Kitchens Of Seattle

On my rounds of the soup kitchens, I learned more than fine distinctions among bad foods. I learned the patience engendered by interminable waiting. I learned the deferential glance, a useful grace that gets one past the guards unchallenged.

From The Holy Mother Of Jobs

(Formerly The Goddess Of Labor): A Report On A Poor Supplicant

Understanding comes like a delayed explosion in her head. Lightning has hit the fireworks stand and here she is thinking about it! Instead of being dead! Instead of flying through the sky with a fountain of fireworks a mile high!

Change

Her speech softened and slowed. She learned to say “ain’t,” to let a handshake trail off. She learned to ask about family before business, to work up to her questions, not throw them in a body’s face.

The Trip To Manmad And Other Stories

This dusty, hot Saturday, I have the privilege of meeting a very significant person: a mad, starving, nearly naked little girl who picks through the garbage outside a whorehouse on the outskirts of a dusty Indian town.

The Park This Week

“This must be the utmost high point in the history of Tompkins Square Park,” I told Jim Brodie, coming back from a poetry reading three weeks ago.

Best Of The 11th Street Ruse

Everyone says New Yorkers are cruel (at least New Yorkers say that — it’s part of our Self-Love), but the fact we’re suffering Benevolence Burnout shows we must’ve had some.