Introduction We’re especially pleased to announce that our “Defining Hard Crackers” statement has been translated into French and published in the journal Echanges. The translator wrote to one of our editors to say: “I have been on the website, and it’s a mine of knowledge for us here. There’s a funny thing about the “yellow […]
Hard Crackers Contributor among Recipients of Poet Laureate Fellowships
New York, NY (April 24, 2019)— The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce the first-ever recipients of the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships. Among the recipients is Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, Poet Laureate of Oklahoma. Mish is the author of What I Learned at the War (Lamar University Press, 2015) and Work Is […]
Third Class
When I was working at a failing radical newspaper some thirty years ago, someone gave me the task of preparing a third-class mailing. This meant hand-processing about 5,000 envelopes, maybe more. Third-class mailings are supposed to consist of identical envelopes, with only the addressee different. For this job, however, the envelopes were of varying sizes […]
The Dead Guy
It’s an easily forgettable stretch of Ventura Boulevard. Deep in the valley. We live up on the hill. Some actress on KTLA reported that 100% of all self-service touch screens and shopping cart handles in the San Fernando valley were completely contaminated by fecal matter. We have tile floors and prefer glass smoke utensils. Needless […]
The Grammar of Loneliness
When the elderly woman spoke to me after I said “hi” outside our apartment complex’s communal laundromat, her words tumbled out with the unmistakable grammar of terrible loneliness. She had a slightly anxious, furtive look, as if she was caught red-handed committing a terrible crime at the same time that she seemed equally relieved to […]
Mamma Cheese
It was always a gamble going somewhere with Mamma Cheese. She was light-skinned. The white women disliked her because they thought that she thought that she was “as good” as them. But the black women disliked her because they thought that she thought that she was “better” than them. Mamma Cheese didn’t take shit from anybody. Once, when I was […]