I Wish We Could...
/This is my first Mother’s…
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…wish my mother could see my new haircut, so fluffy and neat. She always said, “My beautiful daughter!” even when I was unwashed. I wish my mother could read my …
By Karol Nielsen
Read MoreWriting Gallery
On the Lookout
/…come up with a new poem in order to have something to read at my monthly open mic at a tiki bar in the East Village. I was always inspired by colorful experiences…
By Karol Nielsen
Read MoreIn My Dreams I…
/It is a mystery why…
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…my dreams but now I wake up with memories of the dream, sometimes spotty, sometimes clear. I have a recurring dream that I did not graduate from college. I am in my last semester taking classes like French and Economics and I skip so many classes…
By Karol Nielsen
Read MoreIt Was Time to Go
/…started teaching a few months before the September 11 terrorist attacks. I had two nonfiction writing classes as a brand new instructor with the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in New York City. Back then, the school advertised…
By Karol Nielsen
Read MoreGuns in the Sky
/…a man chanting “Guns in the Sky” on my walk in Central Park. He was close behind on the main road and sounded like a Black rapper. Of course I was surprised when I saw a balding, middle aged white man in a plaid shirt passing by. He looked like he was listening to music through earphones plugged into his…
By Karol Nielsen
Read MoreBad Poem
/…I wrote long, poetic narrative poems full of angst about reporting on a gang attack, suffering through marathon training, longing for lasting love. I started writing poems by hand while working as a journalist and I refined the poems on my computer after I became a writing…
By Karol Nielsen
Read MoreFather, Stranger
/I always wanted to tell my father’s war stories.
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…learned how to whistle, then talk, while my father was in Vietnam—wading through rice paddies and trekking through jungle, carrying a heavy pack and cooking his C rations with rice and bullion, surviving after…
By Karol Nielsen
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