Essays

  • Complete the Sentence

    Complete the Sentence

    We baked a fresh bowl for dinner?, I wonder. Do you think the pen will sink or grow? Do you think a pen will sink or throw? Sure. This could be a very delightful exercise (for poets), I think to…

  • Burning

    Burning

    Oh yes, she knows about the holy trinity of colorism, good hair, and a banging body. She understands what she is for these white men, that she is the socially acceptable version of black womanhood…

  • From the Archive: The Dark All Around Us

    From the Archive: The Dark All Around Us

    There is still light in the dark. This is the paradox that Little Bear has to accept in order to fall asleep.

  • The Three-Month Curse

    The Three-Month Curse

    For seven years I’d met the perfect man in fall, dated him for three months, then wailed as Fate plucked out my heart and devoured it, whole and beating. (Only to grow back and be eaten again twelve months later.)…

  • The Flowers You Left Us

    The Flowers You Left Us

    Looking at the two stems housed in a water glass on my kitchen table, it strikes me that “in the ground” means opposite things for flowers and people. As long as a flower remains in the ground, it lives. “Poppies…

  • Calliope

    Calliope

    There are, as my niece says, so many ghosts in Cincinnati; they initiate the weather, evaporating only to rain down again…

  • Play for Camera

    Play for Camera

    I want to tell her that Hunter is Hunter and Daisy is Daisy and both should be allowed to breathe. I want to tell her I know the instinct to split yourself in half, too, that I know the violence…

  • The Divine Aquatic

    The Divine Aquatic

    After all these years, I know now that what felt like rebirth to me had felt like—had been—near-death for them.

  • You Keep Everything Outside

    You Keep Everything Outside

    “So it’s a surprise to you—and not entirely a pleasant one—when you fall in love with someone who has a penis. You thought you’d set up defenses against the possibility, but here he is, and here you are, loving him.”

  • From the Archive: Unbound
    ,

    From the Archive: Unbound

    It’s always been ground glass, scraping against my insides. I imagine a light held to the place where I open would illuminate a mess of torn flesh, throbbing red-wet.

  • On Being Tough
    ,

    On Being Tough

    The path down to the riflery range was steep and winding, littered with roots.

  • Bad Brain Blues: Disclosing an Invisible Disability

    Bad Brain Blues: Disclosing an Invisible Disability

    As the camera zooms out to show CARTOON BROOKE’s full body, the funk music kicks back in.