Notes on Terror: Three Brooklynites Weigh-In
by Tamuira Reid Gordon, 74, Crown Heights, Retired Vet and Woodworker I saw my best friend, my platoon mate in Nam, get his entire head blown off right in front of me. The whole thing. Nothing left from the neck up. A soldier, a kid really, suddenly without a head. It was there and then…
NYC Public School Boards: New Home of the GOP’s Far-Right Agenda?
by Tamuira Reid School Boards across the country have become radicalized, energized, weaponized. They have become the new political battleground where extremist right-wing ideologues test the political waters. The plan is to infiltrate the schools, use them as the megaphone to broadcast the GOP’s agenda, with lots of soapboxing and grandstanding thrown in. Last week,…
A Slow Burn
by Tamuira Reid “A past abortion experience, whether it took place one month ago or decades ago, can be at the root of a range of issues — low self-esteem, relationship problems, disenfranchised grief a slow burn. It doesn’t affect you until later on. [Many] women have had an abortion, but you think you’re alone.…
The Body Count(s)
Five Months In Brooklyn
by Tamuira Reid The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies. In fact, in New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical help. If you’re white, you…
Birds and Bullies
by Tamuira Reid He’s easy to spot. Signature knee-length yellow raincoat, with a stenciled peace sign on the back of it, that he wears irregardless of the weather. Army green cargo shorts with wrappers erupting from every pocket. White sneakers with orthopedic inserts to help him manage his slippery gait. The Roblox backpack from two…
A Measurable Loss
by Tamuira Reid I. I lost my father in August 2017. My son lost his a year later. I’ve always hated summer. Maybe because I was born on a cold January morning and I’ve got winter running through my blood. Maybe because the warm days always felt suffocating to me, in their endlessness. Maybe because…
The Great Erasure of (Special) Education
After Thursday
by Tamuira Reid It is almost midnight here in New York City, and I’ve been sitting at my dining room table for the past eight hours with my finger on the “send” button. Each time, I freeze, regroup, take another sip of coffee, sneak a cigarette out on the fire escape where my son won’t…
Next of Kin
by Tamuira Reid Hold your tongue. When the voice on the phone tells you how much they all loved her. That her smile could light up a room. The only time you ever saw her smile was the day after your sixteenth birthday, when you left your childhood home to leave your childhood behind. The…
Coast to Coast
by Tamuira Reid Go to where the trees are. This is what the voice was saying. My voice. My real voice. Not the borrowed ones, the kind I try on for size when I can’t find my own, voices I can hide behind. Not those. My real voice likes to shoot from the gut, likes…
Fault Lines
A Homecoming
by Tamuira Reid The apartment in West Harlem, five buildings down on the left. The apartment just past the pawn shop, across from the Rite-Aid, parallel to the barber’s where all the pretty boys hangout waiting to get a Friday night shave. The apartment past the deli were you get cheese and pickle sandwiches and…
Nadia Rising
by Tamuira Reid Nadia was missing. She had been missing for three days. Three days, two hours, six minutes. Each time a pair of feet clunked up the stairs, a set of keys jangled, someone coughed, laughed, sighed, or took a piss I’d push the door open a crack, still bolted, because it’s New York,…
Down on Orchard Street
by Tamuira Reid I met Arnie at a Cocaine Anonymous meeting the year before I got sober for the first time. I was high as fuck, eyes lit and hands fidgeting in my lap, then my jacket pockets, then my lap again. Maybe I thought being in a room full of non-high people would help…
Little Dipper
Clatsop County, Part Two: Kevin
by Tamuira Reid It’s nearing lunchtime when I make it over to Kevin’s, and beautiful out, but his window shades are still drawn closed, outside light on. I notice the porch slopes ever so slightly to the right, where a few forgotten footballs and beer bottles have now collected. I knock. Wait. Hear some movement…
Clatsop County, Part I: Leah
by Tamuira Reid Fog fills a dead, gray street. As it begins to part, an opulent, borderline gaudy building glows from within. Like the Taj Mahal has plopped down on this small, sleepy town. In the front window I can see *Leah, looking out. A large neon sign, Open For Business, clicks on next to…
Honolulu
by Tamuira Reid In the picture her hair is wet and stuck to her face. Her eyes struggle to stay open in the terrible wind and she’s clenching her teeth around a big rubber mouthpiece. One of her bathing suit straps has gone slightly askew, and a splash of sun-freckles cover her chest in constellation…