Category: Arts & Culture
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Nick Flynn: From Boston’s Pine Street Inn to Hollywood
Nick Flynn grew up on Boston’s South Shore and spent six years working at the Pine Street Inn, Boston’s largest homeless shelter. Raised by his mother, Jody, who committed suicide when he was 22, Flynn hadn’t seen or spoken to his father in 18 years, until Jonathan Flynn called Nick out of the blue and…
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Marge Piercy Talks With SCN About Her Fiction and Poetry
Patty Wittnebert Tomsky Spare Change News Women’s History Month is upon us. March is also the month named after Mars, the God of War. One of our foremost literary goddesses of anti-war is a woman who lives in a tiny village on Cape Cod and has been writing strong, powerful works of fiction and poetry…
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Three A.M. in Hell
Three A.M. in Hell By Andrea S. Gereighty Blood on the table bone on the wing tonight something evil covers the sky. The moon cross cut Drips with excrement, pus. The wind slices knives serrated, through us. Dehumidifiers hum song, hymn, prayer nothing can save us terrorism stalks there. Will we be hijacked cut down…
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Under the Cover of Night
Jacques Fleury Spare Change News The full moon permeates the darkened street where Chiro sprints to hide under the bridge, the rolling waves of the ocean muffling the footsteps trailing behind him. Exhausted from fear and the run itself, he leans against the wall to catch his breath as the hooligans pursuing him get close…
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'Home Street Home' Worth Reading
Chalkey Horenstein Spare Change News Georgia Saunders’ “Home Street Home: The Virginia Beach Chronicles” can be best described in one word: raw. Raw are the stories she tells about the life of a homeless person. Raw are the tensions that build when people who can’t stand each other are forced to depend on each other.…
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New Chapter for Harvard Square Bookstand: $2 books give way to free book exchange
Julie Monrad Spare Change News Have you ever noticed the second-hand bookstand in Cambridge on the sidewalk in front of 1324 Massachusetts Ave., near Holyoke Street? Not just glanced and continued walking, but truly observed it? Next time you find yourself walking along Massachusetts Avenue, debating whether or not to enter Harvard Book Store or…
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Show of Homeless and Low-income Artists at Old South Church
Local homeless and low-income artists served by area social service programs and centers will be exhibiting their artwork Saturday, April 14th, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Old South Church, 645 Boylston St. Boston, MA 02116. City Heart art show and sale highlights the works of artists from the Cambridge Women’s Center, Common Art,…
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The Birth of Ar Lain Ta (Part One) The Birth of Ar Lain Ta (Part One)
By Marc D. Goldfinger Everyone gets to pay the gatekeeper. In the end we pay with the only currency that we own. The gatekeeper’s desires are simple. All he wants is all we’ve got. They call me the Troll. I’m a gatekeeper of sorts and I have my own kingdom. Of course, I have to…
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Love, Lies, and Broken Dreams (Conclusion)
By Marc D. Goldfinger Jeanie nods her head as the tears spill down her cheeks. We huddle together on the mattress, both of us crying, until we fall asleep. We sleep for 30 hours. When we wake up I go over to the office of the trailer park and they offer to buy the trailer…
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Haitian Folk Tales: The Snake and the Pauper
Jacques Fleury Spare Change News It was a beautiful sunny day in the forest of Carfou, a small town in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. The birds were chirping and the trees were swaying in a sing-song sort of way. Di Dim, a local farmer, strolled down the winding dirt road, occasionally stumbling…