written by Domenic


There was that dream you had. It started off like a distant memory being conjured from deep below. Deep below any conscious thought. From memories you knew you possessed but would never have manifested themselves. Only some light napping on a sunny Sunday to bring them to the surface. They were from the past. Small memories from a previous life that seem so familiar yet so far away; wanting to re – connect with those people or those memories; things that are at once so close to being realized but then immediately disappear. Walking down the street and seeing an old friend only to turn smile at them and say ‘hey!’ as you keep walking in opposite directions, there image fading with the feeling. Looking for them and going to a familiar location only to see that the party is over, everyone has gone home and you missed it. A gorgeous day, you pick up pieces of something unrecognizable from the ground – remnants of the previous memory - and wander around looking for your friends but no one is there. The feeling of meeting up with old memories begins to disappear, you try desperately to grasp at it but before you can it vanishes and a loneliness takes its place. Where did they all go? You walk out of the building as the sun sets. You wake up on your couch suddenly and wonder if you can get to that.

written by Domenic

…it all starts around late February when you think holy shit it’s cold and you are trudging through the brown slush and you could really use a day that reaches 60 degrees or even 50 for that matter. It’s been cold for an eternity. You get antsy and maybe it snows again and you curse off everything in the world on your way to work but then one day in late-March it happens. You roll out of bed and go outside and it’s warm. It is sunny and crisp and believe it or not you don’t have to wear long underwear today. Then one night you smell that spring smell that makes you know you are alive. There’s that one first group of days that happens where it finally feels like it’s here and everyone else knows it too. People are walking around with huge smiles plastered across their faces because this hasn’t been felt since at least September. It’s a Friday you had to work late but who really cares because it’s perfect outside and you get paid hourly anyways. You meet up with friends who are already 2-hours deep into it and you carouse around Manhattan Island in a type of alcoholic lust unheard of in December. After those first few days of spring it is never the same again. All of a sudden it’s Opening Day and you feel 18 again and you think ‘it all goes up from here’; we’re making the right decisions. People are getting more frantic and staying outside and brown hair is turning blond. When you wake up on Saturdays you don’t even think ‘what will I do today?’ because by the time you are thinking that you are already diving head first into the stocked cooler on your friends roof in the sunshine. You blow through a stop sign and it is late May and then you finally realize it IS here. You turn the stereo louder. Nobody really cares about anything anymore because it’s May for crying out loud, summer is right around the corner. Your coat hangs in your closet when you go out and not the dirty floor of a bar.  You start trying to bum rides to the beach on the weekends. You take the Q train out to Coney Isle for the Mermaid Parade and sit in the sand to drink beer and eat Nathan’s while the freaks parade all over the boardwalk the sun sets you look up at the moon and smile. All of a sudden it’s July 4th we’re at the beach all day everyone’s laughing, swimming, drinking and living you are alive and you want the world but for right now this is perfect I could be here forever. Driving home in a car packed with lunatics and beer over the Marine Parkway Bridge you catch a glimpse of the city skyline bathed in the early evening sun. Cruising through Brooklyn smelling that summer air filled with bbq and seeing the people, and then the music, coming up on that block party you had to detour on Bedford Avenue gets you lost in Brooklyn and then finally realizing you have arrived and it is finally here. You end up on a friend’s roof with other strangers where you down cold beer, tell stories, jokes, and dance. The sun sets over Manhattan Island the sky fills with bright beautiful explosions illuminating the skyline. While you drink your beer you look out and aren’t sure if it gets any better than this. People are dancing on the roof as you finish up a long kiss with a blonde, see the reflection of fireworks in her blue eyes and she smiles. You lean in for another one and the rest of July is a complete blast you don’t give a shit about anything at all because it’s gorgeous out all the time and you don’t need to put on seven layers to leave your apartment. Going into a store with the air set below 65 makes you shiver. Girls wear close to nothing and there is a certain thirst in the air. Every movement provokes a desire and people act on whims and urges. The AC blasts non-stop you grill and stay lazy.  August comes through and wow it’s hot. You can’t move without sweating and the subway platform is the inside of an oven. The sidewalks radiate the heat into your soul it is almost carnal. People long for cooler days but you know better. You hit the beach every weekend you can. Posting up and putting your toes in the sand to suck down Pacificos as you look out at the horizon letting your mind unwind slowly. Unraveling and cutting those loose ends which used to tie a noose in the back of your mind. The rooftop parties are classics the students come back to town and all of a sudden there’s a pennant race and then the playoffs are on. What happened to September? It went with the humidity but it felt damn good while it went. Will the Yanks do it again? Then you dress up in a ridiculous outfit and go bouncing around the Village like a maniac and as you wake up the next day to get a glass of water you look at the clock and realize that it is Nov. 1st already. I could have sworn that just the other day I was sitting on the roof of Berry Park on a late Sunday afternoon in August sinking Paulaners into the warm summer evening. Now I can see my own breath. Well the city in November isn’t half bad but then all of a sudden you are out in Manhattan and it’s really cold and you are all bundled up from head to toe.  You find yourself on Lafayette and Houston and maybe everything could just be OK if I could get myself inside and drink Bulleit until the weather warms. A memory comes of a New York when you were fresh. When everything just seemed better than when your family moved out to NJ. When the sun the stars and the city lights shown with more vividness and color. When you see someone on the subway and you could have sworn you know them from some time previous but you just can’t seem to close in on the memory. You know that there is something in this city you lost a long time ago. Somewhere on those dirty side streets, in those video stores, the stoops, the restaurants, the dingy bars and the loft parties there is something you left behind that day in 1992. Something that you’ve tried to recreate, something you’ve looked for through endless six packs, parties, nights, cigarettes, and Jack Daniel’s. Those cloudy Sunday mornings when you wake up with a white crust under your nostrils look out your window staring for a few minutes and then sigh. You can’t really place the feeling or the time but you know it’s around here somewhere. You’ve come back to find it. For now you just countdown each day till the next paycheck; you seem to be living for the next day instead of living in the present. You try to just get through each week so it can be Friday again. Days don’t seem to exist in between the weekend. Time feels like it is moving faster than you can live it. Faster than you can grab on to it and say ‘hey! Slow down buddy remember when we put our feet up and smiled and laughed?’ After a while you realize that you are older than you expected to be at this age. Something happened too quickly. You make it day by day grunting around, you forget how cold it is outside but then…

written by Domenic

Groggy eyed and with his hair soaked in beer, Beer which had been sprayed from all over the place in different points last night, he came to on some couch he had never known. Where was he? Holy shit the headache made its way onto him like a jackhammer on second avenue. Or was that the jackhammer going off down on Second Avenue? Either way the last thing he remembered was the last out. Then people pushing, yelling jumping shoving and beer being sprayed every which way, his friend hoisted him up to swing him around and he knocked his head against a steel column. Lights out until right now. We goin to work? A voice said to him in the dawn dark room of this 92nd street apartment.

Well we are close by, so yea I guess. He had waited for this day for a while. Planning to take off the next day if it were to have happened however now today after it did happen he felt himself getting back on the six train and moseying his way up to 125th street for a day in the beautiful fall sun. It was November of 2009 and the Yankees had just won their 27th championship, beating the Phillies 4 games to 2 in an amazing playoff race that had taken him into and out of excitement for a month. In this time he had put going to the gym and eating healthily to the wayside. Each game was spent at the bar and with friends. While he knew he could ride out the high of the championship season for a little while longer, the weather would start turning soon. The days were already getting quite short and at night you could see your breath. The end of the baseball season meant the end of summer. The end of long sweaty days and smelly alcoholic nights, nights where cigarettes fill ashtrays and it is so humid the cocaine clumps together and renders itself useless. November is arguably one of the best months to be in the city. It is cool but not cold and it rarely rains. Sometime though, it changes and quickly does it change. The weather seems so quick and confident that only once December hits do you realize what is actually happening.

No point to think of that now, as he strode to work with his hair crisp with beer. The Miller Lite had dried and matted his hair into that of a lunatic. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was going to work one might assume he was a vagabond with a fancy for cleaning himself with lager.

He was walking with a co-worker. He’d been there before and had made this walk on these early crisp mornings with her a few times. He had forgotten she was also at the game. They must have met up after the blackout.

As he walked into the office people began exchanging money. There were bets going as to whether or not he would show up after the game. He showed up, and in the same clothes he wore the day before, with a couple of added ketchup stains and a silly grin. Luckily there was little work to be done on this day so he could just talk shit with his co-workers about the previous night’s events, as was their usual way of operating. Standing outside in the afternoon sun, leaning up against the base of a crane on the jobsite, cigarette in hand, smiling like a lunatic, in his mind, he couldn’t have written it any better.  

written by Varenne

    A life spent battling his emotion's hold over his ability to function; the brooding cripple upends another alarm clock with a flat fist of 5 AM EST reticence. One leg guides the other as the bed spread's sheets distended form flattens without a human body to keep it warm. Sitting up now with vapid eyes, Juan was as tired as any other workday morning, yet he felt a certain extra sense of helplessness as he spilled his cereal in little crushed up bits from his mouth, pallidly watching as they rained down on the Formica tabletop. Where indecipherable grumbles and mild curses once danced about in his rhetoric, now hung a languid, dejected sigh; on his best days, in his mind, he wouldn't utter a single word till well in to the early afternoon. He called himself a cripple, and with apologies to the millions who truly suffered some type of physical or mental handicap, he was right in this assessment. He flicked his pecker over the toilet, like a flower on a clown's lapel, and laughed at the exercise in futility called Friday morning. He then took to his dream journal and scribbled down some hasty notes:
 
I 
 
    Morning greets you with a mountain you must climb to merely make this day no different than the rest. Legs like brittle stumps of a pine tree, blood pumping slow, brains like a sieve; yet clinging to dreams of endless sleep is altogether pathetic. Pointing out the obvious is all too painful and necessary in the endeavor to connect with other human beings while your brain is ablaze with cryptic witticisms and a desire for missives that in the midst of elucidating erudition, refute themselves. If you succeed in dissuading your brain from dwelling on certain key phrases, the mantras that have haunted your waking hours, those moments of craving for something remote and most likely long gone; if you succeed in taking control of your life instead of saying yes to everyone's hopes and expectations for you, then what have you done? What have you become? What were you before you became the thing everyone thought you ought to be? Or all along has it not been love that guided the sycophant's miserable longings? The myth of Sisyphus all too often devolved in to weary retreads of Albert Camus' nuance on the ultimate inquiry that, in fact, the ur-metaphor of one accursed man exuberantly pushing a boulder up a hill only to never reach the top could be almost universally regarded as a useful metaphor for life, and that in the effort to abscond from this solemn truth, suicide may be the only true expression of free will.
 
    Juan delighted in discussing his favorite Greek parable with total strangers; he bought his groceries once a week with the explicit knowledge that he could secure at least 30 seconds of conversation with other bulk buying shoppers on their way to the egress. More often than not Juan found himself asking, "when you look in the mirror, do you see that same man desperately trying with every last ounce of strength and focus to achieve an impossible goal?" And most would have to agree, they knew the old fable as a part of the human condition; we want what we can't have, we test the limits of our personal fortitude, and in the search for the ideal end up not far from the mere idea itself. Nimbly, he would flip the scenario, "when I look in the mirror," he spoke, "I see the boulder." This leading to further discussion, as to what he could mean. "Well," he might struggle to articulate, "can you be both vain and completely hideous?" He continued, "I am caught in between the dream world and the one occupied by worldly desires. I know I offer nothing, but whimsical musings on the whatever my middling brain can process in the moment. I'm terribly sorry to have taken up your time, but is my belief that exposing you to an essentially useless side of civilized humanity will build incalculable strength at your ability to go on enjoying your life." Strangers were often aghast, or at least wholly exasperated, by the fury at which these words flew from his mouth. Indeed, he was self-serving to the point of being a parasite. These were the best days.
 
With 45 minutes to go till he knew absolutely had to get out the door, Juan returned to his journal and, marking a new heading, began spouting third person blank verse :
 
II
Milk seemed such a strange thing without childhood conditioning to crave that ecru nourishment. A brief struggle with lactose intolerance, and occasional digestive failures has not dissuaded him from consuming a gallon a week by his lonesome as far back as he could recall. There was a seeming weightlessness, if anything at all a paucity, to his consumption; the entire process brought him no earthly pleasure. Morrissey's moribund Peel Sessions screed begged the question of what rules what within the confines of the body and mind dichotomy, the legitimate struggle betwixt mind and body's conflicting desires within a single entity. Still Ill, yes, nonetheless, it was a gas to wonder why he didn't seek harmony in his description of this singular system we all inhabit simultaneously. Creation and chaos; the vertigo that comes from knowing you are just on the ride of your life and getting off cannot change anything; Camus' coup, like John Barth's Floating Opera, is the inquiry itself eventually leading an individual to see the uselessness of suicide as anything other than a purely selfish expression; the kind of ultimate masturbatory fantasy that only adolescents and burn outs concern themselves with. You're older and wiser, but only of how blithely deranged your outlook on the world was as a coddled youth. Building blocks of life; trite twenty year pop culture trends; it is all too much to bear without at least trying to strike a balance. But in an effort to make the ledger clean, do you not have to forsake someone or something? In our fears and hopes, are we hoping there will be someone to say goodbye to?
 
He couldn't help but take pause and ponder the absurdity of his habits and quotidian comforts: the utter hypocrisy of continuing to exist at all in this world weighed heavy on his mind. Winsome, yet inelegant, against the backdrop of a rising sun, his legs paced with the gait of morning stiffness as he proceeded to unlock his bike. He called himself a cripple, because he felt beat the hell up. He called himself a cripple, because he struggled with things most people would find to be involuntary, blood simple.
 
Juan pedaled slovenly; 2.5 miles to the call center's guarded gate. His bicycle was a dismal display of human engineering; in spite of his disabilities, ever proud of what little functionality he could eke out of his bones, he maintained his own equipment and the squeaking sounds of his gears and chain would make a more sophomoric passerby think of an old box spring plying two morbidly obese newlyweds. This daily commute brought no shortage of angsty sweat to the back, taint and feet of our quixotic cyclist. Amidst the blissful moments in the men's public washroom, assuaged by an oddly angled mirror, Juan would loudly mind to his smelly frame in the hopes of making today the best day yet. And who could blame a young man for holding out hope at all? Amidst the atmospheric unawareness so much of the opulent craving that fills our waking hours, there are moments when the spell is broke and the world is one the wiser.
 
Live alone, die alone; he held no grudges against those who may have given him quizzical or concerned looks in line at the grocery store upon noticing a basket full of various hand cremes, frozen vegetables, toilet paper and a lonely gallon of whole milk. Yes, it was better to make people turn inward and wonder what they had just seen, rather than bleed in to their world with his examinations. Yes, he was handsomely deformed, he was able to walk that finest line between blending in to a crowd of people and the dizzying precipice of total social isolation that geniuses, misers, misanthropes and the disfigured know all too well. And oh how he traipsed about that arbitrary border that our minds create to deny us our those wishes which we know in our heart of hearts will never materialize! Trying to teach the world to laugh at wish-fulfillment; seeing their selfish desires, that so celebrated goal, as arbitrary as what they would eat for dinner that night. His responsibilities at work had to wait a few more minutes, while he eked out another entry:

III
We hold up the corpse of another dead martyr, another bright white genius, a man of his time. Might it work to cut up the cadaver in to tiny bite size morsels and dole out samples with a toothpick and a napkin in the effort to distill his brilliance? Ought we extend this metaphor in to the realm of the written word and rework the already complete thoughts of someone who took the time and effort to create cogent analysis of this world we live in? Will his visage burn in to the canon of the greats? What was written in those tomes at the Library of Alexandria? What did the world lose that day? What did a dying man whisper to his aging canine companion while choking back salty tears? All these questions fill these fleeting, waking hours. I hold up a candle to the attic's ceiling and see a moth clumsily flutter it's way towards the light source...

written by Domenic

Mark never really wanted to move to this sh*t town anyways. He grew up in the Bronx. Far away from here on a city block that might not have ever existed. It was one of millions in the city; people on stoops and the local bar. The heat in the summer could bake you if you weren’t careful. A few blocks away there was a subway stop that would transport you to anywhere you wanted to go. Well it felt like that anyways.  His wife convinced him to move out to the suburbs a while back after they had a couple of kids. She didn’t want to raise them in the city and was growing wary of it herself.

Come on, he would always say, it’ll be fine and anyways I have a good job here.

Of course that wasn’t enough and one day it was done and over. They put a down payment on some three bedroom in New Jersey and left the city. It took him so long to adjust to suburban life that he just stopped trying. You had to drive any place you wanted to go, there was no walking. People recognized you everywhere and you couldn’t just disappear into the masses like in the city. The Chinese restaurant down the block sucked and there was no Italian market.

Instead of finding a new job he decided to open up his own pizza place. It was near the local school so a lot of kids would hang around from time to time. Grabbing a slice and some soda after class was always an adventure. There was always some tiff between different cliques. Someone would end up getting a slice in the face or soda poured down there shirt but never anything too out of control.

The worst part about the ‘burbs wasn’t the little dunces who came into his pizza place. It was the adults. People who thought they were prince and princesses. As if they deserved some special treatment because they inhabited some town and had money. A place no one actually cared about. Noone knew what happened between him and another man a few years ago in an altercation on Kent Avenue. He was walking past the East River Park on a beautiful summer night and some guy started hasseling him for change. This was well after he had become jaded and crazy. When even on the happiest sunniest days he felt nothing. The guy pulled a knife on him and Mark did just the same, startling the guy. He never told anyone about that and no cops showed up at his door. Sometimes he wondered if it had even happened. There was something so satisfying about it that he couldn’t place. For the past few years it was as if the winter blues had never left him. He was perpetually unhappy about something. This was an about face from what he usually was – happy and completely content with life. Something clicked in him that he could not click back.

by Domenic
‘I swear I know that person from somewhere’ you think as you make eye contact with a woman and a fire ignites in your chest. Maybe you know them from younger. Young
 enough that you weren’t quite conscious yet old enough to form that bond that two people share.You swung on the swings together, you ran around in diapers, you laughed, you cried. You had your own little community of toddlers to play with in the park. You made your own rules and ostracized anyone for any reason.
Then you all got older and moved out to the suburbs and never saw each other again.You have that feeling…where is this person from?! You can’t place it at all. Suddenly you think it’s coming to you. It’s locked deep in your subconscious and now slowly being released. Like molasses the memory flows towards your conscious thought. This person may feel it too but you guys are on the 4 train and that would just be awkward. You’re thinking, maybe I hooked up with this person a while back. Maybe I met them one drunken evening out and about and I’m just being silly. Maybe I see this person all the time and just didn’t realize it until now. That’s why it feels so damn familiar.
A memory comes of a New York when you were fresh. When everything just seemed better than when you moved out to NJ. When the sun the stars and the city lights shown with more vividness and color. When you would touch your Dad’s beard in amazement and giggle.Right when you think you’re about to come up on it, on that memory, it’s gone. Just like that. You know that there is something in this city that you lost a long time ago. You can’t really place the feeling or the time but you know it’s around here somewhere. You’ve come back to find it. The train stops. She gets off at the same stop as you but once you get above ground you lose her and she disappears forever. You put on your Ray Bans and walk home as the sun sheds its final glow over Manhattan. A strong gust of wind blows and cherry blossoms from a nearby tree flood the street while electronic music pulses from a car cruising up Bedford Avenue.  

written by  Domenic
What a crazy weekend that was! Either way, he had forgotten all about the girl until he ran into her on his lunch break. He was walking outside with his co-workers after getting a soup and half a sandwich.  The last weekend was pretty wild. His friends had thrown a couple of really fun parties. He always seemed to be able to meet girls at parties but never seal the deal. Then if he did he would hook up with them for a few weeks and then one of the two parties would lose interest. He would never want the commitment of being with a girl. Or she would just be crazy.

                He and his co-workers would always talk about their most recent sexual conquests. Some you could tell were lying others either were great liars or actually got laid from time to time. They were a pretty funny bunch. He was one of two American born white dudes in his crew of colleagues that he would hang out with. Other than those two there was a Jamaican, a Puerto Rican, a Guyanese, a Turk and three African-Americans, two of whom were white. They all dug woman, sunshine and cold beer. They loved to shoot the shit, talk shit and make remarks to whatever pretty ladies would walk by when they went out for a sandwich for lunch. The only other American white guy was the most vocal of the group. He was in his mid-thirties and couldn’t stop playing around with women; never settling down, always on the prowl and always in some shade of a hangover. He always seemed to be making moves and plans. They liked the freaky chicks and, as the Jamaican would say, if they aren’t freaky yet, when we get to them, we’ll freak ‘em out. He always thought that was funny. This particular day they had decided to run downtown a bit to grab lunch. Funny he would see her then, he thought.

                The day had gone from crappy to beautiful. The clouds left before noon and the sun came out to dry up everything. The temperature had climbed to around 75 degrees Fahrenheit by 2 O’clock. As they were bouncing around outside at work, plans were forged to get drinks after work in the sun somewhere. They all worked uptown on the east side so they decided a good spot would be across town on the Hudson River. There were 2-for-1 drinks on the roof deck. They could catch some rays and get buzzed. At 3:30 they all jetted across town save Jack, who had to stay back and finish up. When he finally did, at around 5, he was ready for a cold one. He left work so quickly he had forgotten to take off his work boots as he walked across town on 125th street, the sun beginning to set in front of him. He had a backpack on, a cheap pair of sunglasses, a t-shirt and dirty jeans. The street was crowded, people were out in full force. He walked with a purpose.

                He made it there and met up with his co-workers, who had also invited some females along and everybody already had a few in them. They ordered more and more drinks as the day grew dimmer. Amtrak trains would occasionally rumble by on the elevated track between the bar and the Hudson River. The mood had a hint of lust. Finally, when they had had their fill of liquor and cheap beer, they stumbled down to Dinosaur BBQ. The beer kept flowing. Eventually, after quarts of beer and tons of laughs they left, carousing down Riverside Drive. It was a Friday and some of the crew wanted to go home and others wanted to continue. A few left, disappearing down into the 1 train nearby to zoom to wherever their homes were. The rest piled into the only other American’s pick-up truck. Their mission was to drop off a girl on the east side then head downtown or to Brooklyn to keep the buzz going. Once they dropped off the girl they hit the FDR and sped downtown. Blasting music and singing at the top of their lungs. After passing under the Williamsburg Bridge an axle on the truck gave out the truck started drifting across the highway, miraculously not hitting anyone. Coming to a smoky stop at, unbelievably, an exit ramp, they all got out and pushed it the smoking heap the rest of the way.

                Ditching the car on a side street they wandered around the far east side of Manhattan. In the no-mans-land just north of the Manhattan bridge and near the river they came across a bar with some drink specials and a jazz band playing. Shots and more shots and then finally the blackout arriving at full speed. While dancing to some jazz Jack had taken one of his female co-workers in his arms, spun her around and then back into his arms and they locked lips. Jack didn’t remember much, an image here and so forth. As he came to the next day lying naked on top of the covers of a strange bed, he still had his work boots on. As he looked to his right memories came flooding back. He at once remembered a her, a female he had know for a while and who he saw everyday, riding him. Her large breasts bouncing up and down and her moaning. She, lying there naked as well, began to stir and her eyes open. She was stunned in an ‘I knew this was going to happen’ kind of way. He got up, took off his boots, put his jeans on; put his boots back on, put his previously sweat soaked t-shirt back on. He looked out of her window, it looked like a gorgeous day and it seemed like they were in the financial district.   About as far downtown in Manhattan you could get before ending up in the water, or Brooklyn. He was tired and hungover but in that good way. Maybe it was because it was finally springtime, or maybe because he could feel the mid morning sun on his face through the window. He turned around to find her wearing solely a sock, laying on her bed in a fake half sleep. They had both awoke above the covers. He walked over to her side of the bed to retrieve his backpack. As he did, she rolled over, sat up with her breasts bouncing and her hands grasped his belt buckle, undoing it and removed his jeans.

                After he was finished he put his pants back on, again, said thanks and made his way to the door. On his way out he could hear her say ‘don’t tell anyone about this’. He smirked, put on his glasses and stepped out into the sun. 

Written by Max Epley  

Mark turns the oven on at two and throws a pie in half an hour later. It’s for the staff. At five till three you can smell it from Miss Avery’s classroom. Jimmie and Charlie have their desks cleared by then. They look at each other and nod like they’re in on something too cool for words. Sometimes Charlie makes a face at me before he and his brother bolt. Jimmie isn’t so mean, but he isn’t so nice either.

I stuff my papers in my bag and run down to Antonio’s after the bell rings. The doors are open even though the restaurant isn’t, indifferent to the riffraff that might run in off the streets. I stand at the length of one of the doors to look in without being seen. The twins are at the counter.

           -Yeah, Charlie and his brother say in unison. They don’t have the swagger like when they’re bragging about their uncle in the mafia.

           -You being good to your old woman? Mark is spreading flour over the counter.

           -Yeah, they say in unison again, like little puppies in matching jumpsuits.

           -All right. Scram kids.

           The twins make a v-line for the door, and I step behind one side praying they go to the other. They do, hitting the gas and rounding the corner in gay anticipation. I peer in the place again. Mark is pulling dough out, and three waiters are sitting around a table with Cokes.

           Grandma is sitting on the stoop with Maria smoking a cigarette when I get home. She nods to me and Maria tussles my hair. Such a cute boy you have, she says.

           -Why are you late from school? Grandma looks old. She wears bright colors and bright eyeliner and lipstick and black spandex pants. Everyday. Maybe it’s her age, or maybe it’s her daily pack of smokes that have separated her skin from her bones. I tell her I’m not late, and she tells me to sit with her and Maria. She takes a puff of her cigarette and blows the smoke up out the corner of her mouth, making an ugly face.

           -This neighborhood is changing, she says. I remember when I was a girl here this whole block was doctors. That house was a doctor, that house was a doctor, that house was a dentist, she points down the row, and that house was a doctor. Now I don’t know anyone here.

           -Mmmhmm, Maria remembers.

           -Mmmhmm. Uncle Ben and Uncle Nick used to take me out shopping every Saturday. They said I could buy whatever I wanted. She waves to Miss Butterfield walking by. How are ya? I sneak inside and run upstairs to my room.

           The next day at school Charlie and Jimmie are talking about Antonio’s. The scar on his face is from a knife fight. You should’ a seen the other guy. They are impressed by their story. Once I followed them home after some older kids beat them up, and they cried to their mom. She held them like they were babies. I felt sorry for them, but it hurt the next day when they hit me with sticks. Take care, comb your hair, Charlie yelled after me while I was running away. I wanted to punch him in his stupid mouth.

           On Wednesdays the twins get picked up by their dad. I take my time packing my bag when the bell rings. The classroom files out quickly, but Cindy lingers at the door with questioning eyes. Her friend told me she likes me.

I blow past Cindy. Down a flight of stairs. I count 12 of them. Out the double doors where a streak of sun hits my eyes and cuts across my face. Fall air feels good, except when you run too fast and get a headache. Steady pace, I remind myself.

Antonio’s doors are closed today. I can tell from a block away. And when the doors are closed, they are always locked. Disappointment and relief dumb me over and I walk past. Wait. I knew I heard someone coming out! Without a second thought I slip inside.

It’s dark and cool. The waiters are chatting at their table while Mark spreads flour over the counter. The place isn’t the same when I’m here with Ben’s family. Unsure of what to do, I walk to a wall and look at the pictures hung there. Frank Sinatra. Sicily. This is stupid. I have to do something, and if it’s to run out the door, I can never come back. Instead of taking a deep breath, I turn around and walk straight up to Mark.

-What do you want, kid? He’s working on a piece of dough and doesn’t look up at me.

I don’t say anything.

He stops his work and raises his eyes. The scar is there, on his cheek bone, but it isn’t threatening.

-A Coke.

His reply is short of a laugh, but he gets me the Coke.

-How much?

-A dollar. He’s back to work.

I put five quarters on the counter and tell him to keep the change. He makes that snorting sound again and rocks is head back and forth. Things move slowly between us, like time is partial to the people here where it doesn’t give a lick for anyone else. I concentrate on keeping up.

Mark slides the pile of quarters back to me.

           I don’t make a move.

           -If you’re just going to stand there, he says, you might sweep the floor.

written by Domenic

Bukowski once said ‘someone was getting f*cked and making no secret of it’. Well that’s exactly like what it sounded was happening in the apartment above her. The loud, passionate sounds had startled her out of her sleep. Awaking her just before her alarm was to go off for another day of work anyways. That is probably what I sounded like the other night when I was with those two guys in my friend’s bedroom, she thought. She got drunk at a party and wanted it bad.  Did that make her a slut? She always wondered. She pretended that she was a bit more intoxicated than she actually was to ensure that the guys would take her on. No matter how drunk she ever got she knew exactly what she wanted anyways. Those guys really gave it to her good too. By the end of it she couldn’t really get off the bed and when she did, to go to the bathroom, she couldn’t really walk straight. She peed, put on her jacket, took the telephone numbers of her lovers and walked home in the brisk Brooklyn dawn.  She could still feel herself opened up from earlier. When it felt like they were rearranging her internal organs. 

                She sighed, turned on the light in her room and went to her kitchen where she put some water on to boil for coffee. Once she finished getting dressed she left her apartment locking the door behind her. She stepped outside and immediately into a big puddle. F*ck. It was pouring rain. Just get to work, get through the day and go home.  It is Thursday, or what she liked to call, Friday Eve. No matter how bad the weather got here or how crowded it seemed she loved living in this place. She had moved here for a boy, a young man, a couple of years ago, after college. He wound up attending graduate school out of town. His loss, she thought. Nothing like being able to do whatever you want wherever you want at any time of day or night. The anonymity was amazing. You could turn one corner and be in a completely different world. In that regard, you could be yourself all the time. No being a part of a clique or falling into some sort of social niche. At any moment you could jet and still be in the city. 

                Getting off of the subway the rain had subsided and it almost seemed like the sun would peak through later. She hoped it would, after all it was March, it felt like we had been in the wintertime forever. What an awesome winter it had been though. It barely snowed. Well besides that one blizzard right before Christmas. It was cold though. That bitter, biting January cold that feels like if you don’t get into warmth soon you will turn into a statue. She remembered that night in December when the rest of her friends, those who hadn’t left yet to go to wherever people go for the holidays, were all hanging out at an apartment in Bed-Stuy, right on Bedford Avenue. There was a show in the city that night, nothing too crazy but a fun little thing. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem was to DJ in the Village somewhere, a new place, something about a red fish. Anyways they all decided to convene in Bedford-Stuyvesant and hang out beforehand. Drinking beers/whiskey, not really sure what to do or where to go. Playing beats out of the stereo and carousing all over the building. There were people hanging out in the lounge downstairs so they all went down there with full cups of whiskey and dancing in their veins. After imbibing wildly they took to the street in an attempt to make it to the show in the Village. It was snowing hard. It seemed to get worse and worse as they walked down Jefferson Street although it kept them in great spirits. Most had to keep their heads down, some dove into the snow and made angels. They finally made it to the A-train and started dipping into the drinks they had made for the road. Bursting out into song near the end of the ride they got off at W4th street station and made their way to the venue on Bleecker Street hollering into the snowy night. At one point she remembered dancing and looking up to the ceiling and feeling that a million pieces of glitter were flowing down and encompassing the crowd. The mood was euphoric. 

                When the show was done they went out to the street. The snowing had stopped and the village was blanketed in a foot of snow. Once the snow had really started to pick up earlier in the night people had decided to stay in. As a result there was an untouched fresh snowfall in Manhattan. The occasional cab would pass by as they staggered down Bleecker street throwing snowballs at each other and laughing.

                She got her second cup of coffee for the day and a croissant and went up to her office. She nodded to her boss as she passed by his office and sat down in her cubicle to flick on her computer. 

                She was originally going to leave college and go to Thailand for a few months, maybe a year. The economy had hit the crapper right when she graduated so the job outlook was not great. However because of her boyfriend at the time she was convinced to move to New York and was also able to find a job. At the time she was kind of bummed to not have been jetting out of the U.S. however after a few months she grew to like it and now she couldn’t have imagined it any other way. New York City was her home. Not a place she would just be passing through, living for a couple of years and then moving on. She would live in other places and travel over the world but the city would always be her home.

                By the time lunchtime rolled around the sun had started to peak out of the clouds. It looked pleasant enough outside for her to sit outside and grab a bite. As she was walking into her favorite deli, a taller man was walking out with some of what seemed like his friends or co-workers. He was laughing and gesticulating when they locked eyes. He stopped, smiled at her and said ‘Hi’. At that instant she realized she recognized him from somewhere although she couldn’t place it. His sharp blue eyes stood out at her. 

She shrugged it off and went to order her sandwich. As she was doing so her phone vibrated. It was a text from an unknown number. ‘Hey we met last weekend, are you free this week for a drink?’, it read. Who the hell could that be? She grabbed her sandwich, paid for it and walked back to her office.  Up the elevator, down the corridor, past her bosses office and to her desk, she looked out the window at what was now a sunny day and began to finish her work, maybe some of her friends would be interested in a happy hour later. 

written by Domenic

Each day he saw her as he walked down Bedford Avenue towards the L train in the morning. He had to be out quite early to get to work, maybe an hour before the real morning rush. There were always very few people out. Some were even returning from the bar after a rough night out.               

 Sometimes he would catch her looking at him as they walked on opposite sides of Bedford. It was always kind of a ‘what are you doing up as early as me’ look. Maybe she was a teacher and had to get to her students somewhere in the Bronx. Or maybe she was just looking at something else. He could never tell. Each day it seemed to happen. There was something in her walk that drew him to her. Something in the way she moved those leggings in the winter time. She had a nice round rump sitting on top of those not too skinny and not too fat legs. The way her hips pulsated in the late moonlight or early dawn along with her pretty face, smooth and soft, had him catching himself staring. She wasn’t the best looking girl around but she had that sex appeal; a certain je ne sais quoi that even the hottest ones don’t have. He just wanted to sling her over his shoulder and bring her somewhere safe and warm and work her out for hours. Bury himself deep inside of her never to return; never going to work again. Or better yet maybe just get his kicks before work each day.   He could only imagine what her ass would feel like in his hands. Each day they would descend into the subway on N7th Street and she would venture down the platform whereas he would stay where the stairs dropped him. That’s where he would have the best shot of catching the 4 train uptown. Plus the car that stopped at this location on the track was never too crowded. He could get a seat and read.                

One day, on these daily walks, it was pouring rain on the way to the subway. By the time he got to N7th Street he was drenched. Standing at the top of the subway stairs seeing his breath come out in front of his face and looking down at the huge puddle at the bottom of the stairs a voice came from nowhere.

‘Are ya going down there or what?’ It was the woman on Bedford.
‘Nah’ He retorted with a sly smile. The last thing he wanted to 

As he looked over to her he noticed her vibrant eyes. Up this close his assumptions seemed correct. She wasn’t the prettiest nor did she possess the best body but she had some zest he could not place.  Her face had a little meat on it to and she seemed to be fairly endowed in the chest. She filled out nicely in her taller than average frame.

‘How about you?’ he continued.
‘Nah’ with another grin, ‘I think I am just going to go back to my house and go back to bed’
‘Ah that sounds great, can I come?’ he asked in a half-joke.
‘Sure, follow me’
And so he did. 

Followed her back down Bedford Avenue until they got to Grand Street, where her apartment was. They went inside, made some tea, undressed and got into bed.