The taste of the vodka is strong and burning not smooth like the Patron, I had gotten use to. Without it getting through the day would be harder. It seemed like the million dollars flowed as easily and surely as the Dimitri going into my breakfast glass. For the life of me I don’t remember where it all went.
Prose
We Called Her Fire
She was known as “Fire,” but was named Christina by my grandparents. Christina was our aunt, my mother’s eldest sister. Though we usually called her Aunt Chris, during tense times in our lives we referred to her as Fire.
Grip
Gerald Langston is half-sleep on the brown couch when his dad, Omari Langston, walks through the back door. Gerald is not the type of tired where he wants to go to sleep, but the type of tired where he does not feel like doing anything. A Whole Foods paper bag near filled to the brim with tissues stands at his side as he slowly sits up. It’s noon on Friday. Dad works at noon on Fridays. A quizzical look settles on Gerald’s face as his dad sets his briefcase on the kitchen table and comes to sit down on the couch next to Gerald.
The Anonymous Crossing Guard
I don’t ever want a park named after me.
German
Taking you back again to the time when I was a little boy; eight years old, living with mom and dad in the first-floor apartment on South Ingleside Avenue. We had a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. Furniture was functional and looked nice. Dad kept his precious books on a shelf next to the bed and Mom had her sewing machine set up in a corner near the back door. My Lincoln Logs, toy trucks and trains were everywhere. Not a lot of space, but I was happy. And I’d say we were all happy. Dad was working at a Downtown theatre and Mom catering. We lived the average Southside of Chicago life in the mid-Nineteen-fifties.
Jerrie
Lizzie Smith
Man can go to the moon, but a person who is DeafBlind drinks a glass of water, and people say it’s ‘Amazing’!”
Country Club
Katie Hill
The delivery work was kind of hard on me. Those sacks of rice and potatoes could get pretty heavy. Most times there was another boy on the truck to help out. On this particular day Micah Lieberman worked with me. He was a couple of years older than me, and bigger. Had dark, curly hair and seemed to be smiling all the time. He lived several blocks from me. We saw each other mostly at school, but we weren’t really close friends.
Dodging . . . and Dodging Some More
Shon Kaiy
The amount of lights on the street was okay—that never was a problem. You get hurt whether it’s light or dark, so it doesn’t matter.
Michael Jordan
i.
The night Michael Jordan scored over Bryon Russell, clinching our sixth championship, defeating the Utah Jazz for the second consecutive year, burying the final shot he’d ever take for my favorite team, I thought it was impossible for the Chicago Bulls to ever lose. I was ten years old then, wearing a huge old T-shirt of my dad’s the color of a blue highlighter as pajamas, jumping up and down in our TV room, beside myself that the greatest thing that could possibly happen had happened again.