Honorable Mention I don’t ask for Steven’s help, but it arrives. The roar of his snow blower cuts through the quiet white haze. He flings the fluff from the sidewalk in front of our house. I still don’t know his last name, or how he came to live in Jamaica Plain. A second, shriller roar […]
Archivos de Categoría: Stories
Honorable Mention My first date with Mike was a Jose Feliciano concert, who sang the Doors «Light My Fire.» After that, it was easy to ask him to my senior prom. I wore a pale peach gown, and Mike, a black tuxedo. We didn’t want the night to end, so we walked all over Brighton, […]
Honorable Mention The din of traffic rumbling over the Charlestown bridge rudely intruded into my lunch, but the breeze was cool off the Charles and I could see the masts on Old Ironsides just across the water. I leaned on the Harborwalk railing, exhaled and let my focus go soft. Looking down to lazily crumble […]
Honorable Mention Something horrific has happened. The sidewalks around Dewey Square teem with the dazed, the desperate, and the depressed. Most stream away quickly in search of relief. One man in a rumpled suit collapses on a bench, phone pressed to his ear, and tells his wife he won’t be home for supper and he […]
Honorable Mention There’s a group of men in their late 60’s who sit down at Cafe Mirror each morning to eat breakfast and solve the world’s problems. They talk sports, politics, family, and current events– and I learn more about Brighton overhearing snippets of their 6:45am conversations than I do from any other news source. […]
Youth Prize Like nighttime snow, the seals float, suspended behind the glass walls built into the docks, the aquarium. A foot of glass between them and the filthy sea, city built, land shaped, trash patch innovation. Odor denoting algae and motor oil. Tourists march the boardwalk, sitting like triumphant soldiers, feet dangling over the granite […]
1st Place Riders’ complexions change as we cross invisible residential boundaries. Candy Crush colors explode, thumbs scroll; eyes on screens, not on each other’s otherness. Black and brown English High students jostle for the seat, cursing and laughing, liberated from lectures and pop quizzes. Condo-dwelling gentrifiers commute in wool slacks and sensible boots and concentrate […]
2nd Place / Giải Nhì Peddling along the Fens, I start to decompress, swapping COVID tests for crickets, heart monitors for mallards. This night was longer than most. A man with failing lungs had asked for his daughter. We cannot allow visitors, I’d said. He asked me to speak louder through my mask. Stopping at […]
3rd Place Last year, I finally devoted a day to walking the entire Emerald Necklace from start to finish. I began my journey at Franklin Park, and travelled through the Arboretum, across the Riverway, and down Commonwealth Avenue towards the Commons. I know the city streets well after a decade of living here, but I […]
1st Place YOUTH CATEGORY There’s a pharmacy away from Chinatown’s busier sector. It rests across the road from the cash-only bakery. When school lets out, some students amble into the bakery to purchase pork buns and egg tarts. Those that don’t enter, look both ways before running across the road into the pharmacy. A small […]