Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by Naomi Solomon

Irma gets to the restaurant at 6:30 a.m. and does the heavy lifting before the college kids who work the register arrive. She chops the store-bought tortillas to get them ready to be deep-fried into chips, and works the corn meal, pat pat pat, making from scratch the tortillas for tacos, tostadas, huevos rancheros. The beans are set to simmer while the first batch of rice begins to boil, and the meat is chopped but not cooked because it has to be fried up fresh every time it’s ordered. Scrapes the counter clear of dough, runs tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and peppers under streams of cold water in the steel sink, and begins to chop up the day’s pico de gallo.

Then the girl gets there, light hair in a sharp ponytail and bags under her eyes—with this one it’s hard to know whether she’s been out late drinking or up late studying. She says Good morning, how are you? politely, in Spanish, always using the usted form. Her Spanish sounds like rocks on the beach, some words smooth and shiny as they should be, well-used, others jagged and new as if they have only just been uncovered for the waves. She takes down the chairs, makes coffee that almost never gets bought—it’s terrible and cheap, bought in bulk at Costco—refills the glass-fronted refrigerator’s supply of sugary juices and beer, and, when the time comes, switches the stereo from Irma’s salsa station to one of only seven CDs they’re sanctioned to play when the restaurant is open. Irma rolls her eyes and the girl flips the sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and unlocks the door.

They brace for the breakfast rush—which in this university town runs from opening until the smaller lunch rush begins around 1:00 p.m.—and Irma thinks about the small things she shares with the ponytailed girl, with the other college kids who work the register (all of them sure to be gone when their four years in town are up, if not sooner): the narrow space behind the counter, the tense feeling in their hands when the line starts to reach out the door, the calm frustration when, every morning, yesterday’s work is undone. The seaside town with its constant battle between the permanent and the temporary, what’s here now and what will always be.

by Liz Mathews

I have a friend who continually ribs me about my home state, which is probably easy for him since I come from part of flyover country. I don’t recall which of his notions came first, the idea that Iowa was founded as a prison colony (false), or that Iowa is as flat as a pancake (also false).

As it is, I recently returned to Iowa for my annual winter break, and after twelve hours of travel and travel waiting, I finally landed at the Des Moines International Airport where my father and sister were waiting to drive me home. I and my fellows from Northwest Airlines Flight 5439 out of Minneapolis rushed past all the disgruntled people still hoping for flights, and skirted on through the airport toward the escalators that would lead us to our baggage and our transportation away from air travel.

But as I sped myself toward the escalators, a display in one of the two gift shops the airport houses caught my eye. It was bright pink and it was a t-shirt on a mannequin bust and written across the mannequin’s medium-sized chest was the word “FLAT”. I continued my quick pace, then came to an abrupt stop, and did a 180 for a second look.
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by caitlin macrae

After last Christmas I went back to the place where I met you. It was warmer than what I’d left. Things had changed but you were still going to bed after sunup, roving the quiet town in the fake mustache I’d lent you the last time I was home and sleeping while the rest of us moved.

We went to your mom’s house, with your new friends who were high as all get-out, and your mom made us the best dinner. When we got there, and even on the way there, I was so mad at you, on account of the highness, and the high driving through high-winding mountain roads, and my righteous grief-induced demi-sobriety. You, as always, told me not to worry, that everything was fine, or would be. I, as always, said okay. As always I didn’t mean it. It’s like that between us, where I try to will myself into okay-ness with things that are normally so much less than okay. I let it slide and I believe you because sometimes believing is everything.

And besides, once I saw you and your mom it was easy to worry less. Because if someone’s mom is hugging them in that mom way and making mom-type jokelets and jabs about you in front of your friends, everything really has to be pretty much golden. It was a good night, talking art with your mom in that cavernous house, doing the dishes even though she told us not to. Clearly, then, it’ll all be fine.

And we drove back from your mom’s house, down from the mountains to the ocean, and somewhere around Summerland this song came on, the most perfect late night long drive sleepy song, and I would’ve asked you who it was but then I would’ve had to stop looking in the rearview mirror into the back seat, where you were curled up with the first boy I’d ever seen you hold, and you looked so well, not tired or jittery or too cool to be my friend, just well. Had I asked, you might have moved, and honestly I just couldn’t risk it.

by J. B. Staniforth

The summer after my first year of university, I moved back to my hometown to work. In my job at a communications company, I was paired with Peter, an older writer and editor who took a liking to me and tried to educate me about the business. Over the summer we became good friends, and toward the end of my time he called me into his office.

“I’d like to ask a favor of you,” he said. “It’s not business, and you can say no.” He explained that his friend’s son Rob was about to start university at the same school where I had gone, and said that he would like to have me take Rob out to lunch and tell him what I knew about the school and the city. I agreed.

Peter’s son Alex also worked with me and when he heard the plan, he told me to be aware that Rob was from a pretty conservative family, and that we might not have a great deal in common. I didn’t worry about it—when the time came, Rob and I met and had a fine lunch. He’d just returned to Canada from several years in England and we shared an affinity for British authors, films, and television shows, so we talked about school, books and movies and laughed a lot.
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by Vanessa Hope

The language for this poem was farmed from an article about the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator. The pursuit of these physicists to understand the origin of mass got me thinking about the origin of emotional weight. And the purveyors of it.

If nature is kind, for every known particle there’s an as-yet undetected superpartner
Its mission: to recreate conditions at the beginning of time
Privileging marketplace values above all, it has no native language
It spits off merit-based praise in additional spatial dimensions beyond the three we know

Emotional orphanism is a magnificently expensive gamble—
Noble and stirring, full of the sublime beauty and terror and romance of everywhere
It’s like art. Is art useless? Yes and no.
        You have to go to where the accelerator is.
      Everyone’s work has the same unambiguous focus: building and running a collider.
The largest machine ever built is full of evanescent blinks

Hinging on imminent breakthroughs in describing charm and beauty
The measurement of observables contribute to the awareness of the vastness of our ignorance
It is all fed from a tiny gas bottle
They hope to move beyond the Standard Model, bound by a massive conceivable disaster scenario… the source. the wellspring.

by Liz Wyckoff

Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 8:00, my mother attends a fitness class full of middle-aged women called Strength and Toning. Earlier this week, on my first day home for the holidays, I decided to join her.

At that point, I imagined myself strolling into class and wowing the group by touching my toes or doing a few crunches. But when we entered the gym at 7:50 and my mom waved to her friend, Becky, on the treadmill—a woman in her early seventies jogging before the class—I began to become concerned.

I was right to do so.

The women had been increasing their reps all month, so we did everything twelve times. We stepped to the side, squatted, lunged forward, then back, and lifted our legs to the side like pairs of scissors. Then we did the whole thing again in the opposite direction. Eleven more times. For just one set.

In the wall mirrors, I watched myself getting red in the face as I raised the three-pound weights over my head. Next to me, my mother smiled as she pushed her five-pounders into the air with ease, and the woman to our left lifted her sevens like cake. I tried to focus my attention on Teresa, the instructor, as she counted off our tricep extensions from the front of the room. “Ten more!” she shouted, before launching into a story about her daughter winning Middle School Student of the Month.
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by Kate Axelrod

A little over a year ago I was living in Los Angeles and halfheartedly trying to pursue a career in the film industry. I was unemployed for the first couple of months and mostly spent my days in coffee shops, browsing the internet and trying to remember what autumn felt like. I had been sending my resume to dozens of people and companies a day, rarely hearing a response, so when I finally got an email back from Jerry, a “writer/producer” looking for an assistant, I was pretty elated.

When I arrived the following morning, at a three-story apartment complex on the edge of Koreatown, I readjusted my expectations a bit. The intercom was broken and a tangle of wires spilled out from the peach concrete wall. A moment later Jerry called out to me from an open window—his long, graying hair dangling like an elderly Rapunzel—and threw down a key.

Jerry had opened the door to the suite and when I walked in he was reclining on an old corduroy armchair. He was tall and wiry, wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a Hawaiian tee-shirt that exposed a perfect triangle of his tan and leathery chest. He took a small tube of Binaca out from his pocket and gave it a few sprays before gesturing for me to sit down on the couch across from him.

I just finished this great script and I’m looking for someone to help me with pitching.

Jerry was talking very slowly. I wondered if he were high or maybe I just hadn’t gotten used to the West Coast yet. I need help calling agents and backers and stuff like that. We’re pretty much looking for everyone, the actors, producers, PAs, everything. At that I offered him my generic interview shpeel—how eager I was to start a career, how passionate I was about the business, etc. Well great, he said, I’m sure you’ll be great. Let’s go into my office so I can show you around.
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by Ian F. King

A friend of mine was the last person in New York City who had never been to see the Christmas tree (or “Holiday tree,” if you prefer) at Rockefeller Center, so last Saturday we went to remedy that. After coping with the insane crowd long enough to get a couple of pictures to prove she’d finally seen it, I asked what other holiday-related things she hadn’t seen in that part of town. We went over to watch the ice skaters in Central Park for a minute, then headed over to Columbus Circle, which had a small holiday market and some trees with cool blue LED lights on them in front of the shopping center. Then we got on the train home.

On the way back to Brooklyn, I asked if she had seen the giant light cone they put up every year under the arch in Grand Army Plaza. She had not. If you also have not, it looks like this:
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by S.K. Evans

I hate Christmas Specials. So, when a friend suggested we watch “something Christmas-y” and drink mulled wine, my first thought was: the My So-Called Life Christmas episode! Juliana Hatfield. Homeless guardian angels. Teen angst. Plaid. OMG, perfect.

Besides, after hearing rumors that Billy Corgan is dating Jessica Simpson, I’d really just like to go back to 1994. Back when things still made sense.

Angela Chase may have been my first girl crush. Like Rayanne Graff, however, I didn’t just love her, I wanted to be her. As far as I know, every awkward, vaguely literary, over-sensitive teenage girl did. It’s amazing the show didn’t last (well, I guess not so amazing when you consider that it was one of the first television shows to deal explicitly with gay rights and to explore teenage sexuality and underage drinking). In today’s tween-marketing world, though, Angela would be a hot commodity. She is every twelve year-old girl’s fantasy. She wears multiple layers of flannel, remains a virgin, writes ridiculous poems about gingerbread houses and she still gets the hot stoner guy. Even if the on-and-off relationship was so obviously painful for my fictional emotional doppelganger, the fact that he secretly loved her in a way teenage boys never actually love girls allowed me to maintain the tween illusion that there is actually something profound going on behind that stony façade. Right. Boys are jerks because they like us.
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by Liz Mathews

According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) website, the average weekday ridership is somewhere around 8,739,680 people. Almost 9 million people, riding the 2,056 miles of track, the 3,912 miles of bus route. For the most part, the MTA goes from point A to point B and then is forgotten, until it’s time for us to go somewhere else. For the most part.

But then there are mornings like November 19th, when the F and G trains were not running for a significant stretch of Brooklyn because, it came through the grapevine, someone had been struck by a train at 7th Avenue. By the time I left home, crowds were walking away from the train station and toward the nearest bus stop, where every bus that went past was already packed. I’d get to work when I got there.

When I did, Gothamist was the only source online with any news about the incident, and the article didn’t say much more than I’d already heard. But the reader comments were revealing. Although we do not generally speak while we commute together, the anonymity of the internet presents the ideal sounding board for all the thoughts flickering behind the eyes of our fellow riders.

The first comment: “Yes, it was a pain in the ass today.”

Followed by: “Tragic: for the jumper, the desperation; for the train conductor, the guilt; for the riders, the delay.” This second person then took a less thoughtful approach: “Hundreds of Park Slopers were forced to walk three blocks to the 4th Ave. station. Most passed the time by using their Crackberries as they walked, making for a not-so-pretty sight of weaving and bobbing bodies trying to walk and text at the same time.”
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