Essays
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From the Archive: The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation
I want to leave the party through the window and find my uncle standing on a piece of iron shaped into visible desperation, which must also be (how can it not?) the beginning of visible hope.
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Anecdotal and Harsh
The thing about trauma is that it can split a person right down the middle. And J. was, indeed, bifurcated in this way. That is, she occupied multiple timelines simultaneously.
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Space to Breathe
We inhale when we’re born, then breathe and breathe and breathe until one day we exhale our final breath.
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Voices on Addiction: Whatever Fatal Thing
D— was dreamy in the precise manner of Neil Young circa 1974. Long, dark hair; green eyes; great butt; nice smile. He was sweet, funny, just tall enough. Wore a felt hat with a hatband he’d beaded himself, and a…
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The Last Book
The poet goes to the supermarket for peanut butter. The poet cleans the toilet. The poet responds to emails.
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Thalassophobia: The Black Boy and the Sea
I am now twenty-seven, and I still do not know how to swim.
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Voices On Addiction: The Hypnotist
Dad quit smoking via a hypnotist shortly before my sister Margaret was born. When I was eight or nine, he liked telling me the story of the hypnosis, sitting together on the green sofa in the living room, parallelograms of…
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Constraints: A Hometown Ode
. . . the sheets hold a diagonal crease: the memory of the line, an imprint as obvious and useless as the adult our childhood selves once planned to be.
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SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW: A Search for Transcendence & Annihilation in New Zealand’s Hippie Paradise
“I once ate a mushroom in New Zealand,” I tell people, “though I had no idea if it was edible.”
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Gentlemen, Start Your Engines
In 2022, I attended the 106th running of the Indianapolis 500, and watched cars hurtle past at 220 mph—fast enough to cover a football field in nine tenths of a second. Over 325,000 fans cheered louder than the engines themselves.
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Pecking Order
I didn’t feel guilty, not exactly, but I did feel a twang of remorse as we left her by herself.
