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Giving Away Gardens

A Crip gang member approached the woman for whom I was building a vegetable garden — an old woman on welfare, an ex-prostitute, ex-waitress, ex-chicken-butchering plant worker. He said he was tired, pimping was hard work.

Dignity And Other Staples

Eating In The Soup Kitchens Of Seattle

On my rounds of the soup kitchens, I learned more than fine distinctions among bad foods. I learned the patience engendered by interminable waiting. I learned the deferential glance, a useful grace that gets one past the guards unchallenged.

From The Holy Mother Of Jobs

(Formerly The Goddess Of Labor): A Report On A Poor Supplicant

Understanding comes like a delayed explosion in her head. Lightning has hit the fireworks stand and here she is thinking about it! Instead of being dead! Instead of flying through the sky with a fountain of fireworks a mile high!

Change

Her speech softened and slowed. She learned to say “ain’t,” to let a handshake trail off. She learned to ask about family before business, to work up to her questions, not throw them in a body’s face.

The Trip To Manmad And Other Stories

This dusty, hot Saturday, I have the privilege of meeting a very significant person: a mad, starving, nearly naked little girl who picks through the garbage outside a whorehouse on the outskirts of a dusty Indian town.

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.

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.

Scavenger’s Run

In Guangzhou, China, I once saw two men row through the muddy waters of the Pearl River to pick up floating leaves of cabbage. Now, a few years later, that’s what I do: make the scavenger’s run.

Separate Vacations (Voyeurs In A Strange Land)

I was aware early on that we were on separate vacations, you in a sun-drenched country on the cusp of the rainy season, and I as lost as a piece of luggage, fallen into some dark, sludgy place, a certain waxy glaze over everything.

Wealth

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a warm smile, eight pieces of chocolate