Paul Mariani

And then, in an instant, it’s gone: the world of East Fifty-First.Gone the round-the-clock clack of the Third Avenue El,the clutch-grinding rattle of Fords and the clop clopof those gray dun dray horses down on the cobblestone street.Gone now the demon-like sparkles and screams of the Elthat mixed . . . . Continue Reading »

A paralyzing gelid vortex of a January morning. He lay under the covers as the beckoning New Year’s sun began to manifest itself through the curtains of his bedroom window, but unlike the busy old sun unwilling to rise up and begin the day. His better half, it must be said, was already . . . . Continue Reading »

With my father’s Army ballpeen hammer I’d found down in the cellar, I kept banging on the swordblade, trying to turn it back into a plowshare like the ones the prophets sang of. Plowshares? Hell, what did I know of plowshares? Once more trouble was stewing” you could taste . . . . Continue Reading »

How old the story is, we have come to see, and yet how true. The kid’s back home at last, knowing he’s lost everything the old man gave him, spent on booze and one-night stands, a sucker for every sob story his friends had found to separate him from what they saw as their inheritance. . . . . Continue Reading »

In the hot Washington afternoon, in one of those endlessly bustling government offices, there sits a man named Michael J. Astrue, the fifty-four-year-old head of the Social Security Administration. Competent, organized, bald, and busy, he is not a politician, exactly, but one of those people who . . . . Continue Reading »