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On Walking

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

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

A Thousand Words

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

Rude and Raw

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

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

A Thousand Words

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

Red Desert

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

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

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

Lily Geismer on the Democratic Party’s Failed Vision for the Working Class

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.