Monthly Archives: December 2022

Ho Ho Ho Hannukah

Five years ago my boss’ grandson visited her jewelry store with her husband. The holiday season had been brutal. We had yet to make a sale. While her husband parked their Landrover, Jeri taught the six-year-old how to open a safe and once the handsome lad opened the steel cube she asked, “Did you get […]

FAMOUS FOR NEVER – ON SALE

FAMOUS FOR NEVER A STORY OF FAME AND MISFORTUNE BY PETER NOLAN SMITH Rome wasn’t burnt in a day. – James Steele MANGOZEEN BOOKS 2022 In the 1970s city politicians launched countless projects to stem the tide of ‘white flight’. None of the doomed programs achieved their goals and the population of the Lower East […]

White Dogs Love Turkey

On December 25, 1966 morning millions of mothers across America gathered their older children to peel apples, potatoes, turnips, and carrots for our eight family members and another five-ten guests. My older brother called it ‘KP Day’. After the turkey was cooked almost perfection, my mother hefted the crispy-skinned carcass out of the oven and […]

New York Desolation – Poem November 30 1976

A last kiss through cold steel bars Accompany your parting glance Our worlds, met and joined Drift away in this final act Your steps echo off tunnel walls Becoming your last trace And they too vanish under the roar Of the subway that gives you escape In that moment I call out desperate You don’t […]

Le Necrophile

Back in the late 1960s the biggest house in Quincy, Massachusetts was owned by a funeral director. His daughters were the most beautiful girls on the South Shore in 1967 and they introduced Cream to their admirers. I was one of them. So was an apprentice embalmer for their father. The other suitors joked that […]