Category: Urban Fiction

The Interborough Juror

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By Joseph Morales

*In real life, Marble Hill Playground is owned and operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Carmen Gonzalez is a nurse at the Moses Campus of Montefiore Hospital in the Norwood section of The Bronx. Her husband, Andrew, is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They have been married for 40 years and share an apartment in the Marble Hill neighborhood, overlooking the northern tip of Manhattan Island. The couple bonded over the ambition they both have in their unique crafts and a desire to do the best they can for the people they serve. For Carmen, that means racing around the hospital floor ensuring that all of her patients are as pain-free as possible. Meanwhile, Andrew’s time was spent doing endless research and making constant phone calls to meticulously gather a set of artifacts for immersive exhibits about the history of the universe.

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Cranberries in Crotona Park

Joseph MoralesLeave a comment

By Joseph Morales

It is a hot and humid summer day at Crotona Park in The Bronx. The date is Friday, July 3rd 2026, and it is the start of Fourth of July Weekend along with the middle of a historic heat wave. This Friday is only the second time since 2012 that it has hit 100 degrees in New York City. The last time it was this hot, Robinson Cano was the best player on the Yankees and many of the modernist buildings that are visible from the Cross Bronx Expwy didn’t exist yet. Though much has changed, the things that make a summer day in The Bronx special have not. Dozens of people from all age brackets are lined up on Fulton Ave, anxious for some time to cool off in the olympic-sized Crotona Park Pool. The jingle of Mister Softee combined with the roar of the Metro-North Railroad and Cross Bronx Expressway make for a track more distinctive to the West Bronx than any hip hop mix created. Vendors known as piragüeras or piragüeros, pace the sidewalk hoping to sell their homemade piragua, filling the air with an ambrosian smell no other treat can match.

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