The Short, Implanted Grass
The first time I met Leah, she was reading an evolutionary biology textbook in a tree in the Mathey courtyard. As the weather grew warmer in the spring, I began to see her there almost constantly. One day, I decided to overcome my aversion to aerated New Jersey soil and sharp acorns, and joined her reading session.
by Lily Offit on
Color War
Our guns were semi-automatic, which means you could shoot as fast as you pulled the trigger, and even an amateur like myself found myself reeling off three or four paintballs a second. I could feel every individual shot through its reverberations—no real recoil to speak of, but a satisfying pneumatic thwunk as the ball hurtled through the barrel.
by Giri Nathan on
Scenes from Petey Greene (Part 1)
Maybe it’s just the New Jersey weather or the tint of the van’s windows but it seems like it’s always foggy when I drive to Garden State, a sprawling correctional complex whose hallways I’ve walked through without ever really managing to glean the building’s external shape. We always drive towards it from the same side. Inside the hallways shoot off from rounded enclosure where the guards sit like identical grayish-beige spokes from a wheel. Sometimes it’s hard to find my way out because everything looks the same.
by Filipa Ioannou on
Scenes from Petey Greene (Part 2)
The classroom always has a smell. It’s because there are too many bodies for the space, grown bodies, breathing and milling, restless. Too many adult men looking like tea party guests behind children’s desks, legs spilling out from underneath. The … Read More
by Grace Li on
Nitty Gritty City Committee
The beauty of North Jersey is in its honest, unassuming appearance and demeanor. If you’re scared away by the old factories with broken walls, signs advertising divorce for $399 dollars, or oil tanks, these places won’t be nice to you. But if you go inside, take the train to Journal Square and walk up JFK Boulevard, and say talk to the guy leaning against an old street lamp outside the train station, you’ll find it welcoming. It’s a rugged, middle-class area, but it won’t reject you unless you refuse it.
by Marty Page on
Jeremiah Was a Prophet
Jeremiah (“The Weeping Prophet”) is famous for prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews. In the Hebrew Bible, God called to Jeremiah in 626 BC and said that the Jewish people had forsaken him by worshiping false idols. God instructed Jeremiah to proclaim that unless they repented, the Israelites would be pillaged by a foreign nation and exiled from their land as punishment.
by staff on
The Source of Us
My sister started her coming-out process in eighth grade. My brother and I were in seventh. She entered her final year of middle school feeling alienated and afraid, so when the girl next to her in homeroom showed up with a print-out of Sid Vicious taped to her binder, Steph seized the opportunity to make a friend. Her name was Anna. She was thirteen, wore rainbow-banded tights and sometimes smelled like cigarettes. Her screen name was “kind-o-kinky.” She was the first bisexual any of us had ever known.
by Anonymous on
The Quarter Life Crisis
“I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise Oh, Francis. If only I could say the same. This last line from a book I recently pulled from the towering stack on my desk … Read More
by Lauren Davis on
Disney, Belated
It was difficult to pay attention to anything but the mass of people that seemed to constantly surround me. Throughout the day, I found fears of terrorist attacks—or disbelief at how a terrorist attack had not yet occurred at the park—infiltrating my mind. I remember being packed into a bus on the way from our hotel to the park, standing with my pale tourist arms and legs rubbing against child limbs and moms’ Bermuda shorts, and thinking how perfect of a target we would be.
by Eliza Mott on
Ireland, 2006
My family and I were in Ireland at the time of the zit’s arrival. It was the biggest vacation we’d ever taken. My parents chose Ireland because they had a special connection to it. They were engaged in front of a hotel in Sligo and my mother’s father owned a house in the county of Kerry. My parents wanted us to get a sense of our heritage. I find it ironic that they gave me a name that sounds like it belongs to Ireland’s British oppressors, but I am really quite Irish on both sides.
by Jane Pritchard on
Butterflies
I was eight, on the farm in India, catching butterflies. The pastel powder of their wings crumbled onto our fingers as we held them shut. We’d lift them up for examination, watch them wriggle, realize they were nothing but glorified ants, lose interest, forget we had lost interest and try to catch another one.
by Aranya Jain on
De Sabbatina
At school, I no longer had to wait. I was free to do as I pleased and ceased observing the day altogether. But strangely, immediately, Shabbat presented itself to me in a transfiguring light, the radical antidote to all that displeased me here.
by Joel Newberger on