Winter 2021
Winter 2021 Dedicated to Nicholas Johnson and Maureen Holm, co-founders of BigCityLit Life in the Slow Lane by Nicholas Johnson Poetry Fiction Nonfiction Reviews
Drive by Elaine Sexton
Review by Diane Schenker Full confession before I begin—the basic passions and points of view winding through Elaine Sexton’s new book, Drive, are ones I share. I am a “person of a certain age.” I’m a dog person. I love driving. Driver training in high school was on automatic transmissions so I then had to
A Country of Strangers: New and Selected Poems by D. Nurkse
Review by Bertha Rogers To read D. Nurkse’s A Country of Strangers: New & Selected Poems is to walk the roads of never-ending war, the words illuminated by the light of whistling rockets or blown up by bombs. This collection, gathered from thirty-five years of his poems, tells the truth of war in lyrical language—how
Dinner Under the Stars: A Harp in the Stars, An Anthology of Lyric Essays, edited by Randon Billings Noble
Review by Fran Levin If a family member or friend wanted to invite you out for, say, a celebration birthday dinner at your favorite restaurant, you would probably know in advance what you planned to order and would anticipate enjoying some well-loved dishes. But if that person decided to surprise you with an outing to
The Outlaw Cowgirl, Setting this Anguished World on Fire: Muddying the Holy Waters by Chocolate Waters
Review by Stephanie Dickinson Chocolate Waters, the “unofficial Poet Laurette of Hell’s Kitchen,” has woven together poetry, prose, and photography to create a compelling memoir that commands our interest not only by the poet’s rich personal story, but by her historical perspective. In a prose time capsule we discover the young woman, who will become
The King of Rock & Soul
by Alan Swyer There are words and phrases so familiar, it’s easy to believe they’ve been around forever. Though the term Soul Music feels that way, in truth its genesis actually owes to one specific person: a singer named Solomon Burke. In the pre-Amazon, pre-download days of actual record stores, music was divided into categories:
My Water Job
by Nina Kossman In one of my classes at Hunter, I meet a young fellow who tells me he’s a New Zealander. He also tells me about two things he has—a motorcycle and a great job. The great job is watering plants in rich people’s homes only two hours a week, and when I hear
The Burning of Bobby
by Paul Ellams I always wanted to be like Bobby. From the first time he came round to our house with my sister in 07; the way he wore his Bench Jacket, the way the gold chain dangled off his wrist as he drank his bottle of Becks, and the clinking sound the glass made
Peace Out
A swarm of cars, the frenzy typical of big city traffic, surrounded Dr. Arlo Perkins the day Lily spotted him on her way to the gym. She approached an underpass that harbored a ramshackle community of tents, bags of garbage, and one person, still as death, in a sleeping bag. The trucks and SUVs on
Plaid Couches
by Emily Krauser Did everyone break on a pilly plaid couch? Did everyone break? Was everyone a hollowed-out apparition of their childhood self, or was it just her? Was she a narcissist for thinking she might be the only one? She both accepts and denies this possibility, her personality a spiderweb of contradictions. Everyone was