Fiction

by Federica Santini She starts to turn up the cards. Diamond, spade… Death! We first see him shirtless, effortlessly lifting a dead tree. He stares into the camera while breaking down a wardrobe with his bare hands. He takes a selfie, full center, his muscles bulging under a too tight button-up, Elisa’s quirky smile just an afterthought to the left of the frame. Picture after picture, we learn to know him as a good giant, a good guy who was love-struck. He was enamored, in tears, obsessed. He was a good person, naïve, clueless, just wanted to help. He was a small-town Rambo and so very likable. Liked. We hear nothing of her. She is at the edges, small print to his front page titles. She only exists through him: his obsession, his unrequited love. On the last Sunday of August 2019, 2...

by Mike Fiorito I first put Ernie Paniccioli’s name to his face when I saw Juan Carlos Pinto’s portrait of him hanging up at OYE Studios in Brooklyn. There are always many artworks on display at Pinto’s studio. Some are completed projects; some are works in progress. But this portrait really spoke to me. The hint of a smile, but yet the face wasn’t smiling. The eyes looked welled up with tears, but they weren’t crying. Pinto managed to express a living essence behind the eyes in this portrait. “Who’s that,” I asked. “Where have you been? Living under a rock, bro?” he said, laughing. Then he told me it was Ernie Paniccioli, or Brother Ernie, as he’s also known. Ernie was born in Brooklyn, of Cree Native and Italian American parents, and grew up in a tough section of Bedford Stu...