Employment

The Good End of Pleasant Street

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

When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

Lesson Plan

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:45 -0400

The Right and I agree on the potential of universities as a space in which students develop ideas that can transform the world. The difference is, they want to stamp it out, and I want to encourage it.

Persons of Interest

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:45 -0500

The idea that a certain kind of people are worthy of credit is entirely a social construct based around an idealized vision of society. Those same people who got credit also got all the other benefits of living in postwar America.

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.

Sunbeams

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

Slight was the thing I bought, / Small was the debt I thought, / Poor was the loan at best— / God! but the interest!

Paul Laurence Dunbar, “The Debt”

Lasciare Stare

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

My father took a puff from his Camel / and dispatched his message / in smoky cursive, Lasciare stare, / then said it again softly

Bad Lunch

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

I’d come to think of being a chef on a yacht as a kind of psycho-spiritual quest, like Homer’s Odyssey, only instead of tumultuous seas and six-headed monsters, our challenges were wealthy clients who arrived by private jet with Louis Vuitton purses on their arms.

Tips

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

Waiting tables at a diner, playing in a wedding band, giving massages at the Phallus Palace

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.

Tents

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

On a solo backpacking trip, in a desert military base, at a church revival

Walking Out

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

A peach-pickers’ strike, a crisis of faith, a paralyzing accident

The Work We Do

ebrina@uno.edu — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0500

I can’t believe it took me so long to hold myself accountable for how much my life actually costs. Forty-two feels incredibly, abnormally late to realize that, yes, time is money. And, conversely, money is time—time that someone, somewhere worked.

Love and Other Pandemics

jhnelson427@gmail.com — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400

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

jholman0099@gmail.com — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400

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.

Bone Frag

petercstenson@yahoo.com — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

There are countless theories about the origins of the pebble storms. The one that makes the most sense to me is something about melting ice caps and ocean acidification and dying coral reefs.

Gift Shops of the American Wild

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:01:00 -0400

The Paradise Inn sits at 5,400 feet on the south slope of Mount Rainier, the highest peak in Washington State. Up here the air is thin and crisp, the colors are saturated, and every breeze carries an aroma of pine and the trill of birdsong. Even immersed in such concentrated beauty, my heart aches. For the hundredth time today I think of Jack, a fellow writer in the graduate program I recently completed. We bonded over our love of books and our homesickness for the Midwest.

Uniforms

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

For a job at Burger King, a prison in North Carolina, a girls’ school in Iran

Home Sick

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Once we start to recognize that most of us will, at some point, have to step out of our professional role to provide care, then we have to transform how we’re running our economies. At the moment, our economies are relying on these hidden tragedies that befall women behind closed doors. All to keep the wheels of industry turning.

Why Are These the Things We Worry About?

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Teo and Jeff were driving through rainy Pine Bluff, Arkansas, on their way from Wisconsin to Texas, when Jeff got even more feverish. They stopped at a hospital called Reid Memorial, where the examining doctor thought Jeff might have spinal meningitis. The hospital admitted Jeff, then set Teo up in a separate room.

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.

Lumps of Coal

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 05:05:00 -0500

He was ten and drove a team of mules / through the shadows in mine shafts, / pulling a wagonload of coal / that glinted in the carbide light / anchored to his cotton cap.

His Body Of Work

cow2pie@aol.com — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:05:00 -0500

I loved my father’s body. It worried me, too. . . . I didn’t know what polio was, but it sounded scary, and he had survived it. This helped form my view of him as someone who could survive almost anything. Like Wile E. Coyote, he might get hurt and maimed, but he never, ever gave up.

Coffee

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 04:00:00 -0400

A family business, a workplace lifeline, a reminder of home

Updating My Bio

leathtonino@gmail.com — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 04:05:00 -0400

The Mystical: Leath Tonino is the author of a fragmented novella and 30 billion profound thoughts that blew away on the wind. His work has appeared in snowy fields and dusty canyons, and he has pieces forthcoming on the surface of moonlit lakes. His memoir is currently being translated into stardust and deep-violet silence.

Sparrow’s Guide To Business

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 05:05:00 -0500

When you walk on sand, you leave footprints. When you work, you leave “workprints.” The people who come behind you will judge you by your workprints.

Unsheltered

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 05:00:00 -0500

The Martin v. Boise decision stands for the very simple principle that punishing a homeless person for undertaking basic, life-sustaining activities like sleeping or sheltering themselves — when there’s no adequate alternative accessible to them — is cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

A Sandwich Is A Concept

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 05:00:00 -0500

Our biggest fear was dogs. Ronnie and I looked up dog facts like maniacs. Can dogs smell through plastic? Does the USPS use drug dogs? How do you trick drug dogs? How effective are drug dogs? Are drug dogs a scam that the government uses to justify illegal searches?

from Nickel And Dimed

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:00:00 -0400

What surprised and offended me most about the low-wage workplace (and yes, here all my middle-class privilege is on full display) was the extent to which one is required to surrender one’s basic civil rights and — what boils down to the same thing — self-respect.

Bottom Feeders

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:00:00 -0400

I feel close to Dad on the drive home, our legs mud-dry and tired, the tackle box between us, the pillowcase full of fish and ice. She’ll never admit it, but Mom will be impressed, I’m sure. In a million years she’d never guess how we caught so many. I’ll never tell.