Category:Prose

Ten Square Miles, Surrounded by Reality

Abel McSurely-Bradshaw

Ithaca, New York has to be one of the strangest cities in America. It’s most easily recognizable for its schools—Cornell University and Ithaca College. It is known for its liberalism, its waterfalls and a nationally known music festival called Grassroots. Much like Boston, most of its population consists of college students. Come summertime, half the city is empty. Shortly after the students leave, they are replaced a couple weeks later with music festival hippies by the busload that pour in bearing tofu and non-conformity. Many of these long time non-conformists end up loving Ithaca so much, that they stay. From these travelers eco-friendly communities are created, homeless populations skyrocket and a never-ending Bush protest begins. It is a very liberal, very white place. It is a place of acceptance of all ideas except the wrong ones, who are open to all cultures but will never change their own.

Global Microjam – Shape of Jamz to Come?

David Fiuczynski

A case for microtonality? At the crossroads of African American rhythms, microtonal harmonies, and eastern melodic inflections and improv concepts – in other words all the elements that the Greater Boston area has to offer with Berklee as its base…

Scrabble

Greg Hatem

  I was walking down Inman Street in Cambridge the other day, from Inman Sq. to Central.  As I approached Massachusetts Ave., I noticed an older woman sitting on the porch of a random elegant old home.  She was looking…

The First Thanksgiving

Luis Lascano

The doorbell woke me up from a nightmare. Still asleep and confused, I almost stumbled while I was walking toward the door. The only thing I could see through the peephole was the enlarged version of one of my roommates,…

At A Loss For Words

David Kuchera

Taking a moment to breathe in the freshly acrid aroma of cleaning solution, which is overpowered only Airport by Alessio Romano by dozens of double grande half-calf soy mocha lattes, I step into Boston’s infamous two-dollar amusement park.  Having brought…

Starbucks

Attilio Foresta-Martin

Every institution with a very strong identity is based on a precise and defined ideology and on an even more precise system of rules. If you want to see with your own eyes the distorted reality of an institution with a narrow ideology you have to devote at least two hours of your time at Starbucks.

Traffic

John D. Lippincott

Empire 2 by Alessio Romano As night drops down his tarnished, black curtain, And worn-out faces wear the brake light’s glow, We sit captured in a terrible halt. Like a heavy rock in a shallow pond, All hopes tonight quickly…

One Winter Morning

Kikuta Norihiro

Cold Bright day. White Breath. Beautiful low peach winter sun. Birds are singing in the middle of pale tree. Storm brought snowman to a new jacket last night. He is smiling with carrot mouth. Picked up the newspaper. Under the…

The Sunset Tree

Eric Bolton

It was during the summer in which I was 17 when I became the invisible boy around my house. It wasn’t so much that I had a bad home life. In fact, comparably speaking, I was raised pretty well. It…

Disturbed

S. Kean Cattaneo

The battered gray mailbox at the end of our cul de sac used to read  “400” in red letters before some neighborhood kid (who wasn’t me) stole the four and probably hung it in his bedroom next to a Red…