There are tracks that sound like a stunned body in perpetual fight or flight mode. Its skull reverberates from voices shouting, “get up… get out.” The neighborhood is a kill box and the “Only one way out/of course is man made/looking down the tunnel, endless/don’t see a damn thing,” Curly Castro raps on “Night Terra Fabulous,” off his sophomore project Tosh. He’s the son of Barbadian immigrants who raised him on planet Brooklyn but for years Philadelphia has been his …
Tag: black
A tar-painted female figure shines forks for a halo. Her arms have eyes. She’s holding a pair of old brown work boots as an offering. A second figure holds a banjo. She’s skating on top of an alligator that’s lying flat on a skateboard. A third wears electrical outlets for a dress. She’s about to explode. Her chicken legs and tiny feet are seemingly too fragile to support her swollen body. The lips of their cowrie shell mouths curl inward, …
Weeks ago I got an email from Sarah Vinnett. After reading my article, she wrote to me about her family and some of the trials that they overcame. It definitely gave me a heads-up. Thank you Sarah for being so open. Appreciate you allowing me to publicly share your story. My name is Sarah, or in Japanese 聖良. I’m half Creole (my Father is from New Orleans) and half Japanese (my Mother is from Japan, specifically the Kansai area). …
“But Florida dawgs, Orlando? I had that shit on lock for three years… three years. The only reason why I got touched was because of this white dude, Jamie. When you selling to white dudes, they ain’t grinding, they gonna shoot that shit. For two years dude was buying from me like clockwork, two or three g’s worth of heroin a week. When he got caught, all that nigga had to do was call me. I would have had his …
I just changed out of a tuxedo from working a banquet at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Mayor Gavin Newsom was having a fundraiser. Ra’s ship was sinking into the pacific. On the hostel’s rooftop, the San Francisco sky looked like bleeding watercolors. Up came Black. “Damn, you summoned the blunt, my nigga,” he said, holding a long cigar full of the Bay’s medicinal heritage. We passed the blunt back and forth then he told me his story. …
Socials