Cooking
/…was limited to making hot air popcorn with my college roommate. Kernels embedded in the living room carpet. Our other roommate once took out the vacuum cleaner and…
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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