How an only child found first love. — Each semester, my report card made the same complaint: “Eugene’s refusal to speak up in class discussions will hold him back.” I didn’t worry about it, though. As an only child, silence suited me just fine. And being a bookish one, getting good grades came easily to me. But when…

I found you again, a single image, one among thousands from that summer when we could still crowd without a mask. You stepped out into the August dusk, a low sun shining through your dress, the shape of your thighs a sudden intimacy. I was walking downtown, snapping pictures like my idol Garry Winogrand…

I’ve been working from home since the 1980s. Here’s everything I wish I could’ve taught my younger self. — Social distancing has thrown millions of office professionals into the deep end of the working-from-home pool. Many feel like they’re drowning in productivity expectations and guilt. I’m also working from home these days. Unlike most, however, I’ve been doing it for long periods over four decades. Experience has helped me…

“You are failing us!” How incensed, Greta’s stare down, our emptiness profound against Greta’s stare down. Earth and the markets got hot, we all made money. Not a single cent recompensed Greta’s stare down. In wanton consumption we beg for extinction. Our repentant recyclers sensed Greta’s stare down. Two mean…

The table, la mesa, all geometry contained within her plane, she wobbles slightly, one leg missing its glider or perhaps it is just worn, or cut slightly shorter than the others, a charming albeit irritating flaw. …

And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger… Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 6:4 At seven I was small enough to ride standing up in the van, Uncle Sonny and my father up front, me still in my party clothes: white hat, white holsters, tin badge on my chest. One of…

The United States has 270 million guns and had 90 mass shooters from 1966 to 2012. [During that same period], no other country has [had] more than 46 million guns or 18 mass shooters. — The New York Times, Nov. 7, 2017 And they have built the high places of…

Adrift across your eyes’ rare green, my love, we learned the ways adults diversify love. Good Muslims should speak truth to their fanatics? For this Christ got what? Peter left to deny love. I don’t care why The Donald says I’m fired, The Beatles tell me money can’t buy me love…

Filthy Labors by Lauren Marie Schmidt / Curbstone Books / ISBN: 978–0810134690 / 104 pages / 2017 I was nursing another cold Peroni at a wobbly table at the Bowery Poetry Club when I first heard Lauren Marie Schmidt read “In Defense of Poetry,” the lead-off poem in her third…