It is simply part of you. Inside and outside.
Tag: 12th Street Journal
Would You Like to Keep the Strips?
This isn’t about shame. It’s about how little space there is between empowerment and survival–and how blurry the line gets when you’re trying to live with dignity.
Doing All the Things I Meant to Do Ten Years Ago
Here I’ve spent all this time building an identity as a rough and tough, non-driving native New Yorker: city savvy, fast walking and rare.
Letter from a Faculty Advisor
I believe in 12th Street because it offers opportunities for empathy and community, while functioning as a digital creative stage. The publishing process brings people and ideas together and ultimately benefits everyone involved.
Norwegian Concepts
This feeling is called Yalmståd by the Norwegian people. There is no English equivalent. Even calling it a “feeling” does it a disservice; it is both a way of seeing and of being. All we can say is thank God; as the American dialect seems increasingly interpretive, movements like Yalmståd give us the means of understanding our world.
Inheriting Grandma’s Sex Shop
Vanessa and I consider the fact that shame will be the end of these humble businesses staying in stores.
This is Not a TV Review
Maybe it’s the writer in me who can’t resist turning casual conversations into character studies, who treats TV episodes like weekly installments of self imposed personal growth homework.
Flaco II: At the New York Historical
Nothing could bring him back. And then I heard his voice.
Staying Positive
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” I want the good news. But I also want to come off as brave. So, I ask for the bad.
An Ode to the Blue Note
At the venue, the line between artist and spectator is meaningfully blurred.
should we be more solicitous about the earth spinning too fast
or is this just another thursday?
Two Poems by Naomi Riggs
i think / therefore I am / and I / am no child of yours
In Passing
At thirty-three years old, with not even an ugly contender at her doorstep asking to marry her, Alima had gone to see the old clairvoyant.
trees of my youth
what i’ve learned of love, i’ve learned it from trees.
The Sweetest Sorrow
I always knew when you were close. Sometimes, I would smell you on my clothes, but only on the nights you got drunk enough to sleep on my shoulder. I never moved you off, and you never complained about the crick in your neck in the mornings after.
Author Jason Reynolds never gets boring
For his 2024 novel Twenty-Four Seconds, Reynolds realized that there were not many books addressing “black boys’ tenderness.”
The Safest
My glory isn’t just in the moments I feel safest, but in the moments I know love.
Two Poems by Jack Brown
A man walks into the bar and sees only me
because I am there. He says Good enough but hesitates.
Papa, Ieyasu, and Me
Outside the wide kitchen window, the silhouette of Mount Fuji grew hazy in the dusk. When I declared, “Ieyasu is my favorite,” the pride in Papa’s smile was palpable through his thick, silvery beard.
My Ancestors Weren’t Eliot’s
we
are born
etched in names no one speaks,
their silence riding
the currents of our voice.
sacred bodies
how many times can someone cry out for God in a night?