1,001 Chicago Afternoons

On Noble Street just north of Milwaukee, on one of those invisible dividers between crappy and gentrified, there’s a co-op that looks like a projects. » Read the rest of this entry «

I passed a game of bags on Saturday. Plywood boards made into boxes, hole in the top to toss beanbags into from a distance. Underhand lobs. The beanbags spun a bit as they arced through the air before coming down with a maraca wham on the plywood. » Read the rest of this entry «

The election judge was dangling from the chin-up bar when I came out from behind the booth. » Read the rest of this entry «

What would I tell the people who just let themselves in the garden apartment a few doors down from mine? What would I say if they asked why I was standing in the cold on an unshoveled sidewalk, staring at their house?

“A killer lived here,” is what I would say, the only thing I could. “Her name was Wanda. And I want to know everything about her.” » Read the rest of this entry «

1: Wanda Was Here

2: Henry Manning

3: The Count

4: Yen and Papa

5: (Coming Wednesday) Matka, droga matka

6: (Coming Wednesday) A Letter to Wanda Stopa » Read the rest of this entry «

After high school, part of my job at the forest preserve district was cleaning up the outhouses.

I would go in with rubber gloves, heavy-duty blue paper towels, something to kill the fist-size spiders, a can of spray paint to cover the most recent round of “Meet here at 1 a.m. for hot gay love” graffiti, a can of spray disinfectant that advertised a single contact could kill everything up to HIV-2 and a shovel to scrape off where someone had invariably shit on the seat over the week.

Patch.com was the worst job I ever had. » Read the rest of this entry «

“OK buddy, OK buddy, OK buddy, we’re going to sit you down, OK? We’re going to sit you down, OK? OK?”

The man in my arms nodded and blinked long eyelashes caked with snow. » Read the rest of this entry «

“Many thanks for what you have taught us,” the peasants said to the soldiers. “We shall never go hungry, now that we know how to make soup from stones.”

– “Stone Soup” by Marcia Brown, from the traditional folk tale » Read the rest of this entry «

The apples looked good.

So did the pears. » Read the rest of this entry «

With light, deft fingers, the teenaged girl behind the mini-mart counter took the three-inch sheet of paper and folded it into a triangle.

She sat behind a rack of candy, blocked on the sides by bags of chips, miniature flashlights, novelty and other impulse tchochkes. Sitting there in the two-foot space between the counter and a wall of cigarettes, she folded her paper triangle again.

And again.

And again until it became a little paper castanet, a triangular clam shell with an open mouth to grip a space.

She then added it to the object. » Read the rest of this entry «