Past Futures

billy woods on the Cycles and Patterns of Human History

It just takes the right person, at the right time, to light the right spark and make what previously would have seemed impossible the law of the land. When I was a child, Somalia had a government. They might not have one again for the rest of my life.

Butter

I went on absorbing Beth’s hostile digs until a new patient stole her attention from me. Louise had a round face, dark curly hair, and a generous, pear-shaped body. Her weight seemed concentrated in her thighs. When she arrived at lunch for the first time, her figure filling the doorframe, Beth’s eyes brightened as if she were an African lion coming upon a gazelle. I could practically feel my tormentor’s focus lift off me.

The Telephone Mode

I find talking on the phone to be one of the purest forms of communication. You are receiving the person’s voice, their tone, their laughter, without the distraction of their clothing, their hairdo, their body. I don’t care what someone looks like. I want to hear them sigh with exhaustion or cackle with delight. I want to hear tiny details of the environment from which they speak: birdsong, barking dogs, the beep of a microwave.

Love and Other Pandemics

The thing about the apocalypse is that nobody said it would be so beautiful. Spring is letting down her hair. The air is warm, sweet, and clear. Moss drapes over a storm drain, parting for the rush of early-morning runoff. A heavy quiet has descended since we took to our homes, save for the shrieking hawks circling the shuttered strip-mall parking lot next door to my mother’s house outside of Philadelphia.

Flower People

There was a rumor the NAACP would call for a boycott of white-owned businesses. Eugene’s mother said it wasn’t clear what the objective would be, except to piss off white people and make Black people feel in control of something. “A show of Black power,” she said, holding up a fist from the living-room sofa, but she was worried more people would be killed.

Blues in Black and White

There’s a small but strong subculture of partner dance in New York City, grounded in a love of blues music, the desire to express oneself physically, and the joy of communicating through touch. These photos were taken at public dances and nightclubs in Manhattan between 2015 and 2019.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Back Cover

Driving Upstate with My Father

Driving upstate with my father / at the end of a bad year. Trees begin / to outnumber houses. Rain turns to snow / as fields hang like paintings. / Dad fills his lip with chew, talks.

This Call Is from an Inmate at a Federal Prison

They say you eventually get desperate / enough to call a stranger, someone / who’s added her number to a database / for the incarcerated, someone who’s / even more alone than you.