Cities

City Chickens

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

I never thought // I’d end up like this, domesticated as a pet lamb, / with a mate who worries our hundred-year-old house // needs new everything, shingles to foundation.

Ancestors

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:45 -0400

Some African harmonic traditions and histories may have been redacted, but they’re not lost. In New Orleans, specifically among the tribes, they made sure to hold on to those histories and the skeleton keys of those expressions.

My Bowstring Heart

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

On the field I was all animal instinct and brute force—a bruiser, a bone breaker. Every tackle was a rebuke against a life where fathers die. When I played rugby, I wasn’t a broke, lost little girl. I wasn’t a struggling amateur writer. I had goals. I was a winner. I was MVP. I was someone.

Bars

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

Eating Free

leathtonino@gmail.com — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Perhaps this isn’t the case at all Embassy Suites, but in Flagstaff, Arizona, between 5 and 7 pm, the hotel provides unlimited snacks and beer, gratis. I’ll repeat that: unlimited. Granted, I never imbibed more than three Michelobs and a cubic yard of Chex mix, but still. The possibility of unlimited is delectable.

Expats

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Rhonda tended to take in people—and cats, Jessica said. Spending about $150 of her monthly Social Security check on cat food, in addition to supporting her meth habit, had left her broke most of the time.

A Thousand Words

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

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

Outpouring

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0500

In the aftermath of a second killing by federal agents in Minneapolis, Alison Luterman wrote “Outpouring,” a poem about the massive protests in response to ICE’s presence in the city. It’s a reflection of the enormity of emotion that these terrible events have brought forth—outrage and fear, yes, but most of all love for our neighbors.

The Danish

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Then I felt a small admiration for the Man With The Danish, who hoped to give away excess food rather than throw it in the trash. Maybe I should have accepted the Danish, although I didn’t want it. By turning it down resentfully, I might have discouraged him from ever offering food to a stranger again. But there’s no time to think when someone thrusts a sudden dessert in your face.

House Hunting

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Our sordid credit history seems to sadden more than shock her. Such nice people, she must be thinking. How do these things happen?

On Walking

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0500

To love walking is to love the body, and this has been a barrier for me. Walking requires us to be a physical presence moving in a physical space. Your body is on display, with all its jostling parts and creaky joints. I know it’s vanity—this self-consciousness, this awareness of other people’s eyes—but it was something I shouldered when I walked, something that made me seek the comfort of a climate-controlled car.

A Thousand Words

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0500

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

A Thousand Words

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

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

Rude and Raw

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

If you were around then, you probably blinked and missed Rude and Raw. Not many people noticed when they came on the scene, and even fewer paid attention when they left. They weren’t easily categorized. They weren’t hard rock or power pop, and veered off several exits short of punk. They probably had people telling them they should be more of this or less of that, but if so, they didn’t heed any of it. They seemed caught in this never-ending state of becoming, trying to figure things out as they went, as strange and undefinable to themselves as they were to others.

A Thousand Words

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

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

A Thousand Words

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

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

Red Desert

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Sometimes I think of my early years of living in the city, that watery phase of life when you don’t plan beyond the next week, or even the next day, and every new connection is imbued with promise.

A Good House

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Two days before our family moved into a boxy, modern, three-bedroom home—our first house, forty miles outside Boston and across the highway from the poetically named Long-Sought-For Pond—the painters we hired to paint the bathroom found black mold in a wall. A chunk of plaster had bubbled up and fallen off at the lightest scrape of sandpaper. A week later, we spent an hour in the pouring rain with the home inspector—at last. The housing market was so tight that we’d only briefly toured the house before closing.

At Union Square Park

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A buck isn’t enough for his cup, this ex-con / wants a five, yelling for every passerby to stop / and read his Rikers wristband. // Look hard. Harder, he demands as he points.

Opportunity Knocked

dgmlewis@gmail.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A lot of the Biden administration’s pitch was “In ten years, we promise you you’re going to have a job.” Most people can’t afford to have that long-term view.

Missing

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0400

One week before the planes flew into the towers, I secured my first full-time, salaried job. I had applied to work for the New York City Parks Department at the suggestion of my roommate, Ethan. He’d recently quit his Parks job—not because he hadn’t liked it, but because he was, by his own reckoning, in the midst of a quarter-life crisis, brought on by the unexpected death of his father a few years earlier. Ethan regarded me as lucky because my mother had at least told me about her cancer diagnosis before she’d died. From his father he’d inherited a three-bedroom apartment on Roosevelt Island, just one subway stop and a short walk from Central Park. Ethan sublet my room to me for $667, a remarkably low rent for a building with a doorman, pool, and gym.

Riverside

brody@soultrue.org — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Once we had settled into the new post-Helene normal, I felt called to venture into Asheville’s beloved River Arts District to document the storm’s aftermath. I wanted to honor the artisans, artists, and small-business owners who have poured their souls into this vibrant, creative community. The scale of the devastation and the sheer power of wind and water and mud were almost beyond comprehension.

Crossroads

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:14 -0500

The South is made to carry the nation’s slop jar. That’s deliberate, because then the United States doesn’t have to actually contend with all of its violence. We just put the blame on that region where bad stuff happens and where those backward people are. I don’t think it’s incidental, either, that it is the Blackest region culturally (and demographically) speaking. So it is at once seen as the most racist and the Blackest.

A Thousand Words

me@wesleyverhoeve.com — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

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

Lost and Found

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

I want to be a good man, a good son, but that’s hard to pull off when it’s 100 degrees and feels like 115 because of the 90 percent humidity—current conditions in southeast Georgia. I’ve come home to visit my eighty-two-year-old mother and assuage some of my guilt for not being here fifty weeks out of the year.

Timing

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400

A broken clock, a chance encounter, a long-distance relationship

Blues in Black and White

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400

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

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400

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

Blind History

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400

China is racist. Russia is racist. The US is racist. . . . Africans need to bet on each other. The Black Diaspora and the Global South need to bet on and support each other.

Down in the Valley

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Once I saw the development of new technology in class terms—how a particular kind of technology gives one group of people power over another—it started to feel more sinister.