Sparrow | The Sun Magazine #8

Sparrow

Sparrow lives in a double-wide trailer in Phoenicia, New York. He has published eleven books, including Small Happiness & Other Epiphanies. Sparrow’s new band, Truffles, is an acoustic anarchist quartet. It seems to be a hit. You can follow him on Twitter: @Sparrow14.

— From July 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Machines

There is a man I talk to in the Astor Place subway stop. He lives there, and he’s missing a tooth. Today his hair was wound around sticks.

November 1991
Fiction

Letter From A Mailbag

It was a dare. A dare I gave myself, but still a dare: “I will ride in a mailman’s pouch all day, and write an article about it for The New Yorker.”

September 1991
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Born Too Young: Diary Of A Pilgrimage

(Part Three)

I don’t feel a thrill of nationalism here, like Dad does. He thinks, wow, a country full of Jews. I think, oh no, a country full of Israelis — another language I don’t understand.

February 1991
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Born Too Young: Diary Of A Pilgrimage

(Part Two)

So Jeanne is either with someone and not writing, or writing to Barcelona Poste Restante, as I directed her. I think she has slept with someone by now and probably still is in love with me — that’s my guess. (“I’m lucky with women,” I tell myself.)

January 1991
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Born Too Young: Diary Of A Pilgrimage

(Part One)

First I want to see Baba, and offer myself to the Lord. I’m not saying he’s the Lord — although part of this journey is to find out — but whether he is the Lord or no, or whether anyone is the Lord or no, or whether there is a Lord, I want to present myself to the Lord, and the place to do it is where Baba is. Why? Because I’ve been dancing around his picture for eleven years and he’s come to represent the Mystery.

December 1990
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Earth Day

We were all terribly sorry we’d made the earth pay for our pleasure these last 200 years. We had a fear-taste in our mouths. Maybe the earth is preparing revenge. In comic books, an exposure to toxicity creates superpowered heroes, but in this world we are not so lucky.

July 1990
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Park This Week

“This must be the utmost high point in the history of Tompkins Square Park,” I told Jim Brodie, coming back from a poetry reading three weeks ago.

January 1990
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Best Of The 11th Street Ruse

Everyone says New Yorkers are cruel (at least New Yorkers say that — it’s part of our Self-Love), but the fact we’re suffering Benevolence Burnout shows we must’ve had some.

October 1989
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

For Arlene

A good friend of mine died, of AIDS, a few months back. I went to her, in the hospital, the day before she passed. This was near Boston, in a suburb.

September 1989
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Homeless

I was just rousted off the floor of Grand Central Station by two cops, one of each race. It didn’t occur to me to say, “But I’m waiting for the train to Poughkeepsie!”

November 1988
Free Trial Issue Are you ready for a closer look at The Sun?

Request a free trial, and we’ll mail you a print copy of this month’s issue. Plus you’ll get full online access — including 50 years of archives.
Request A Free Issue