The Narrator

I never saw the angels come. I know they were there. They had to be. But I never saw them. Maybe I was late each time and they had come from heaven and returned. Maybe my eyes were not ready, maybe my soul was not. Woodlawn Cemetery - almost in the 47th Precinct, NYPD   In The Bronx of the 1980s, if you were a cop and you worked "midnights" - 11.30 pm to 8.00 am - which we pretty much all did one out of every six weeks, we figured you'd have a 20% chance of ending your shift with a "SIDS baby." The calls seemed to come every dawn, and I'm certain the dispatchers tried to spread the pain... but still, you could count on this every night. It didn't take long for us to learn to try to hide. Even that Bronx was pretty quiet at 5.30 am, before people started moving toward the subways, before cars stolen and businesses burgled were discovered, but we'd all grab any call we could to be busy before, "child not breathing" came across the rad...

image via NWI Times Go away. Everything needs to go away. The scene in this place. The voices echoing off the tile. Especially the few that call my name. And the guy to my left, and the guy to my right. Go away. There just needs to be me and the fifty meters of chlorine filled blue water that stretch in front of me, seven feet wide, and the tone that I’m waiting for. I just want to do ok. You know? I just want to do ok. There are people watching me. Somewhere up in the balcony they’re there. And if I’m ok, they can get me out of here. There it is, and I’m off clean, and falling into the liquid world, and slipping under and now there’s the perfect time, the long glide and even when I start kicking I’m still in sea mammal mode and I’m way past the third of the pool mark before I need air and start the stroke. Today it just feels right, barely any break between the water below and the air above as I count myself into the first turn, dive, circle, kick an...

Floating in and out of the present. Something in the back of my head really hurts but the pain in my right leg, that's the thing. That light is way, way too bright. I can only see the vague silhouetted shapes of the people talking above me. I feel the shot flowing into my vein and maybe I'm on the concrete deck alongside the outdoor pool trying to look into a sizzling early September sun. Is that Joey? Are we going to do the 4x100? I feel the breeze cross my body and shiver as I try to get up. But I'm way too tired. "Later," I mumble, "I just can't swim right now." "Do you need something?" A nurse is asking. What is a nurse doing… oh. I hear someone say something about the mix of concussion and morphine. Someone touches my forehead, softly. Now I know I'm naked. Who are these people? I see a cascade of long dark hair and try to reach for her but cannot move that way either. I dove for him. In a flash, does cognizance come from tha...

In the summer when I turned thirteen I swam across Long Island Sound to the lighthouse on Execution Rocks. At thirteen there are nights when you cannot sleep. Not because of actual reasons for terror in the house, nor because of worries or pressures. And really not even because the hot, humid Gulf Stream air swamping New York is too still and sweat coats your skin. But because there are so many things to hope for, so many wishes, that your brain cannot file them all away fast enough to let the silence come. This was the morning after one of those nights, and perhaps, not just for me. Ten of us, maybe eleven - it is hard to count or even know all the faces now - mostly boys but not all, mostly members of the YMCA's Swim Team but not all, stood in the long gazebo at Hudson Park which overlooked the beach and the Sound. Late July, and the early morning light mixed with the incoming salt of the rising tide, and the seaweed and fish and the plants of the marshes. The flag in the p...

The last of the sun lit the valley in ways that made all the best myths of my childhood seem possible, golden rays falling on green so deep and on a cloudbank the greatest painters of the world could not capture and, yes, on her skin and on her hair, and splashing off the blue of her eyes. We lay next to each other on the warm bonnet of the borrowed Rover, our fingers intertwined, and I said, "thanks for coming with me today," and she said, "I wouldn't have missed it for the world." I wanted to say so much more, but sometimes when I need them most, words elude me. copyright 2006-2012 by Ira David Socol

The rain was whipping up Fourth Avenue, and the air was brittle with salt and impending cold. But here on this third floor it was crazy hot as the radiators sizzled. Everybody was awake, the kind of wound up anticipation to be expected. I was too, certainly, but I was working on staying in character, so I was pretending to sleep, lying face down on one of the beds, wearing nothing but Irish flag colored bikini underwear, my arms stretched out above my head, as I breathed the smell of my own sweat.   When I had found my way here an hour ago after the run through the chill wet streets from the Smith-Ninth Street Station, unexpected routes on both trains and streets, slipping through the narrow alley alongside the Bodega around the corner, climbing the fence and then through the stair window of this place, I'd been soaked to the skin. As I took in the team that would cover me tonight, and make all the collars, I peeled my jeans, my jacket, my shirts, my socks off, ...

Fresh Kills, from the Wellcome Collection on Dirt , 2011 Exhibition, London If I wasn't wrapped in this Tyvek spacesuit and struggling inside the breathing apparatus I'm sure I would be getting cold. The sun is brilliant but the November wind is rolling off the Jersey highlands and there's nothing at all to block it up here at the top of the pile except the remnants of the fire trucks. We stand out here literally between sunrise and sunset. In the morning the slight glow out across the open Atlantic finds us dressing. An eternity later the last light fades behind the mountains of northern New Jersey and we wash ourselves off. We fill that stretch of time sifting through the untold tons of rubble and dust that were once the World Trade Center in this oddest of places, the special re-opening of the world's largest garbage dump. One hundred and eighty feet above the tidal marshes that centuries ago gave this place a Dutch name for clean waters, Fresh K...

On those hot nights when there just was nothing to do but be away from everyone and everything I'd walk in a slow drift down to the park at the water. There were no lights at all except for one in the parking lot just off the road and the glow of the 7-up machine by the padlocked restrooms and thick lines of trees blocked any infiltration from the lamps of the beach clubs that lay east and west. So in pure darkness I'd cross the enormous lawn, flowing down the hill, to the rock shore and strip off my clothes and being relatively careful of position as far as underwater rocks were concerned, would dive into the cold silence of Long Island Sound. If I needed dreams I'd swim to the abandoned fort and climb out and walk the ancient streets. If I needed hope I'd head for a little island with nothing but trees and warm myself in the glow of the stars. If I needed simply to be gone I'd crawl all the way to the lighthouse at Execution Rocks, cutting across the...

93 degrees. 92% humidity. Radio Car 1352. 2232 hours. 47 Precinct, Sector Eddie, which is not ours. Division 9 radio crackling, "holding 83 in the Four-Seven, anyone available?"   The Police are on the radio. "Every Breath You Take." MTV is the thing you have cable for right now. Limelight, in that old church downtown, is the hottest club, and Liam and I know a few of the bartenders, so we get in. Imus in the morning on WNBC - "Hear the new excitement from Rockefeller Center, Sixty-Six, W-N-B-C" - and Howard Stern in the afternoon keep the day shift laughing but now we're flipping through FM, the volume loud, as if it could drown out the dispatcher. I tell the guy I'm refusing to fight with to get lost. The sweat is pouring down my chest and back under the vest. we have no time for the kind of bullshit this moron and his buddies are trying to pull in the parking lot of the shopping center by Laconia and 2-3-3. We climb back into the ...

St. Patrick's Day was a Sunday that year, and we awoke late, our bodies waiting for the overnight rain to disappear before coming to life. But even that was slow, we breathed in the stew of smells, sheets dried outside on the line, the sweat of our bodies, the peat from the fire in the next room, the salt slipping in on the westerly breeze. "When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses." I did not read her poetry, but watched her as she stood naked, silhouetted against the dull blue sky. "You haven't written a thing in three days," she said. Not a question, so I stayed silent. She turned. "Today?" "Not today, we need to be outside ...

Eric Ascalon (c) I said I wasn't putting a uniform on and I wasn't working the parade and while I wanted the day off that wasn't a huge deal because even if I didn't get the day off and, it's not like I'm not sensitive to the staffing reports that he needs to send in to One Police Plaza everyday, I'll pretty much be here when I'm here but that'll be between him and me. The lieutenant said, "Whatever, but what do we have on these guys in New Jersey?" And I ask, "That the Feds haven't leaked to CBS yet?" He groans. I just say, "I'm going in today. I won't go tomorrow. Thursday I'll look at the reports. I'll tell you something Friday." He says, "Friday?" I say, "Yeah," and I turn around, spilling a little of the now cold coffee from my mug onto his carpet, mumble "sorry" and leave. Then I spend the next six hours wandering through the ruins of the Trade Cent...