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Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
Browse Topics
Body and Mind
Poetry
Love Poem
Brooklyn April 2020 | even now the old men sit / at their corner on the stoop / the three of them on the stairs / one on top of the other / recycled masks hanging / from their faces to appease / whoever loved them / and begged them not to go out / into the street
October 2020Readers Write
My Country
Claiming a heritage, becoming a citizen, landing in a foreign jail
October 2020
Photography
When Living Is A Protest
My work is an attempt to show what it means to live in the struggle in places like South Carolina and Mississippi, and to document protests from Ferguson, Missouri, to New York City. I want to show the faces of those whose lives are spent in protest.
October 2020
The Dog-Eared Page
Letter To My Father
Stride from the crowd to seize the president’s arm before another roll of paper towels sails away. Thunder Spanish obscenities in his face. Banish him to a roofless rainstorm in Utuado, so he unravels, one soaked sheet after another, till there is nothing left but his cardboard heart.
October 2020Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
What Might Have Been Lost
I can say I’m Puerto Rican, and no one can refute that, but I don’t know what it’s like to feel Puerto Rican. I don’t know what it’s like to see the flag of Puerto Rico and feel something that resembles pride.
October 2020
Fiction
Blooming
You can hardly remember now how you would pull out the ribbons she weaved through your hair, launching them into the wind as you pedaled faster on your bike. You have left that girl behind. You believe in the power of ribbons and roses now. You are a woman.
October 2020
The Dog-Eared Page
The Race
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life
Poetry
Musings
A stink bug perches on the bristles of my toothbrush. I know more about ventilators than I should. This morning’s coffee tastes luxuriously of earth. As I run through the forest, pileated woodpeckers hammer and cackle from above. I’ve got an ache in the ball of my foot. Some things never give up.
September 2020Fiction
White Folks
I was working in the yard, raking out the sunny patch where I plant tomatoes and cucumbers, and feeling the pot gummy I’d eaten a half hour ago start to come on, announced by an uneasy self-consciousness and a brightening little buzz.
September 2020
Fiction
Groundhog, Woodchuck, Whistlepig
When he tired of talking, he’d slap a red, hand-shaped conclusion to the quarrel onto my face, pressing his brand upon me, the mark that labeled me as his.
September 2020
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