The message appeared as I was reading to my nine-year-old daughter Theadora over breakfast. She was perfectly capable of reading to herself, but neither of us yet wanted to relinquish this morning ritual. As I turned a page of Flowers …
Essay
When I Crawl Inside This Picnic / I Can Have Complete Thoughts
“I took advantage of being at the seaside to lay a store of sucking-stones….I distributed them equally between my four pockets, & sucked them turn & turn about.”—Beckett, Molloy
My arms are so weak / truly weak, like the stems …
Active Drowning
I envy the grace with which some people take to water: their bodies slick, their confidence unquestioned, feet-first, head-first, the body first a closed fist, then a palm extended, plunging and gliding and breathing with ease. I’ve a graceful doggy …
Kimonos
I wanted to leave.
At fourteen, I had decided that I was tired of blending in with the clean-cut white Mormons in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I decided the perfect place to go was Nairobi, Kenya. I had voraciously read …
Breakfast with Hatti
There was a rip on the red vinyl of the booth at the restaurant. It appeared to swell like a scar as the foam viscera pushed its way out, in spite of an impotent piece of duct tape that barely …
Dream DNA: Personal Mythology and the Narrative Elements of Taemong
While taemong remain part of a vibrant culture of dreaming in Korea, some suggest that the tradition is diminishing in importance. What follows draws from five years of ethnographic research (collecting taemong) and practice (interview, transcription, illumination, analysis) in the …
States of Emergency
This is the year that people will talk about
This is the year that people will be silent about
The old see the young die.
The foolish see the wise die.
The earth no longer produces, it devours.
The sky …
Wild Bikini
By the river, the Verde, in the extra hot days when the mesquite was lush with airborne pepper, I saw Shandy B. hitchhike on the interstate in a wild bikini. It had ties on the hips and a big, gold …
Atlantis
Once upon a time a great philosopher thought the city should be structured as is the soul: reason governing spirit governing appetite. I always imagined it like a pyramid of three parts, each section rotating at its own speed according …
Open Points
The summer I spent working for the Kankakee Valley rural electrical cooperative, the Midwest saw temperatures in the 90’s arrive in early May and last well into September. Rain was scarce and I watched the corn and soybeans struggle in …
