Jennifer Acker's Blog, page 133
June 20, 2018
Non-Native
CATE LYCURGUS
Sandy showed us how. She placed the shovel’s tip a few inches from a tuft’s base. Angled the handle back a bit, just enough to loosen the grass before she lowered, hand-pulling.
Sandy showed us how. She placed the shovel’s tip a few inches from a tuft’s base. Angled the handle back a bit, just enough to loosen the grass before she lowered, hand-pulling.
June 19, 2018
Raiding
MARIAN CROTTY
In seventh grade, your friend Megan invites you to go raiding, which means sneaking around and throwing feed corn on other people’s houses. This is rural Pennsylvania, a small town of rolling fields and old steel mills. It’s fall, cold. The point is trespassing, minor vandalism.
In seventh grade, your friend Megan invites you to go raiding, which means sneaking around and throwing feed corn on other people’s houses. This is rural Pennsylvania, a small town of rolling fields and old steel mills. It’s fall, cold. The point is trespassing, minor vandalism.
June 13, 2018
Paris, April 7, 2018 Saturday
GREGORY CURTIS
Perhaps I should first explain the Place St. Sulpice. It’s dominated by a huge, hulking church on the east side named St. Sulpice. It’s heavy and solid and will last until the end of time, but it has no grace at all. There are two tall towers on the left and right of its facade. They are of no great distinction except that they are the tallest buildings in the immediate neighborhood.
Perhaps I should first explain the Place St. Sulpice. It’s dominated by a huge, hulking church on the east side named St. Sulpice. It’s heavy and solid and will last until the end of time, but it has no grace at all. There are two tall towers on the left and right of its facade. They are of no great distinction except that they are the tallest buildings in the immediate neighborhood.
June 12, 2018
Review: Tram 83
ANGELA AJAYI
Today, more than fifty years after Congo’s independence from the Belgians, I wondered: where is that shadow of the past that Hochschild speaks of? According to the bold, genre-bending Tram 83, that shadow, born of greed and unbridled self-interest a century ago, still hovers over Congo.
Today, more than fifty years after Congo’s independence from the Belgians, I wondered: where is that shadow of the past that Hochschild speaks of? According to the bold, genre-bending Tram 83, that shadow, born of greed and unbridled self-interest a century ago, still hovers over Congo.
June 11, 2018
The Bus
MAHMOUD AL-RIMAWI
Amidst crowds of passengers from France, Morocco, and elsewhere in Africa, there is a seat for young Fatima, the only daughter of Aisha, who has been waiting for her daughter at the bus station in Marrakech for five years. But Fatima is invisible on the bus.
Amidst crowds of passengers from France, Morocco, and elsewhere in Africa, there is a seat for young Fatima, the only daughter of Aisha, who has been waiting for her daughter at the bus station in Marrakech for five years. But Fatima is invisible on the bus.
Current Obligations
PAMELA SCHMID
Raze a house, and you rip out all the things it held: every cross or kind word uttered... every happy face superimposed in fat red crayon over tulip-patterned wallpaper. You suck out all traces of steam left from hot bowls of oatmeal, silence the... words whispered in a dying man’s last days.
Raze a house, and you rip out all the things it held: every cross or kind word uttered... every happy face superimposed in fat red crayon over tulip-patterned wallpaper. You suck out all traces of steam left from hot bowls of oatmeal, silence the... words whispered in a dying man’s last days.
June 8, 2018
Join Us for Weekly Writes, Volume I
Weekly Writes is a ten-week program designed to help you create original place-based fiction and nonfiction. Volume I launches on July 1, 2018. $15 fee includes one free, expedited submission after program completion. Sign up by June 30 to join!
June 6, 2018
The Cloak Room
MARIA TERRONE
The very sound of it was foreign to our ears. Who wore cloaks? Vampires. Stealthy spies with hidden daggers. And men in top hats who appeared in movies and old-fashioned story books. Certainly no one we knew as first-graders at St. Joan of Arc—except, perhaps, for the nuns whose sleeveless black capes swirled in their hurried winter walks through the schoolyard to the convent.
The very sound of it was foreign to our ears. Who wore cloaks? Vampires. Stealthy spies with hidden daggers. And men in top hats who appeared in movies and old-fashioned story books. Certainly no one we knew as first-graders at St. Joan of Arc—except, perhaps, for the nuns whose sleeveless black capes swirled in their hurried winter walks through the schoolyard to the convent.
May 31, 2018
Above Grade: New York City’s High Line
PHILLIP LOPATE
When, in June 2009, the High Line Park opened to the public, it was declared an almost unqualified success. Some architecture critics nit-picked the design, but basically they endorsed it, and ordinary folk, less fastidious, greeted it with enthusiasm.
When, in June 2009, the High Line Park opened to the public, it was declared an almost unqualified success. Some architecture critics nit-picked the design, but basically they endorsed it, and ordinary folk, less fastidious, greeted it with enthusiasm.
Ask a Local: Anjum Hasan, Bangalore, India
ANJUM HASAN
We are so obsessed with the new in this city, so impatient with the old, that it’s sometimes hard to remember that the city has a past.
We are so obsessed with the new in this city, so impatient with the old, that it’s sometimes hard to remember that the city has a past.
