Essays
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Like White Ghosts Swimming
The film director chose to shoot the interview with Paul in the living room. Behind Paul: three deer mounts, one pheasant with outstretched wings, and a largemouth bass, interspersed with family portraits. They’d lit him well; Paul looked good in…
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Aesthetic Nostalgia
Before I fell in love with my name, my biggest reservation was that it gave people an impression of my father I knew to be inexact. These days, because of how much I love my name, it is easy to…
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Love’s Language
Love exposes the so-called “truth” of the world to be a fabrication and asks us to imagine what freedom might look like. No wonder philosophers like Alain Badiou and Mari Ruti champion love so fiercely in their work. Love unsettles…
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Patching Up The Past
When Novak ran past shouting, “Incoming!” I tumbled out of my GI hammock and scrambled to a sandbagged culvert hooch, waiting out the attack with squad leader Lloyd Edge. At the all clear signal we emerged to shouts that a…
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Pomegranate Season in the Underworld
This is the difference I am trying to name. The pomegranate on the shelf and the pomegranate on the newspaper. The fruit polished for display, and the fruit cracked open in a living room. The version of a place that…
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The Godbrother
Candida founded the agency; she was a middle-aged powerhouse with a keen literary eye, taste, and a no-nonsense air. She’d ushered Joseph Heller through the 22 rejections of what was then called “Catch-18” before she found him a publisher. She…
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Self. Pleasure.
After all that foreplay, I’m brooding—my feathers, ruffled. Then, the me who wants me takes me to bed, undresses me slowly, covers me in kisses. I’ve always had a way with me: I know what I want and how to…
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A Potion for Sadness
A nurse stood at the door—scrubs, clipboard, the whole nine yards. “We’re ready for you,” she said. I followed her down a hall and behind a curtain, where I changed into the robe, laid back in the wheelie-bed, and sexted…
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Her Bitterness: A Woman’s Choice
For years, she only talked about how lucky we were to pull through as a family. It was luck for my father and me, I think, to be the survivors of 0.01 percent. But what was it for her, when…
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Wake of Weight
People think losing weight feels natural and glorious, like a snake finally shedding its skin. That’s what I’d imagined: the victorious satisfaction of squishing out the last toothpaste from my tube.
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Big Beautiful Home
From the beginning, Our House drew me in, with its bright red door contrasting against the deep blue exterior—my favorite colors. Inside, as I wandered from room to room, I asked myself, Is this Our House?
