Warning: CHOKING HAZARD—Not suitable for anyone who has trouble swallowing... more

I always knew I would wash up on an island.

Say, “we should start a band.” Get shut down because everyone wants to sing but no one knows how to play guitar. 

I wanted them to think that I'd developed some sort of heat resistant super power. "This?" I said. "This is nothing," even as sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. 

Fuck couples therapy!

I am split nails, stubs of my fingers. I am a mouthful of dental picks,
the disposable kinds that clog up the ocean and sea... more

When I was thirty I found my birth mom. I’d written her letters but never sent them.

This is a frontier town. Means it’s small. 

Now, if the frontier was moving forward, like they do sometimes, our town might get... more

I had no brothers or sisters, so I received a single white envelope. I took my time opening it. I watched as those around me opened theirs. One of my friends started crying. Breathing deeply, I read mine.

They gather in the basement to weep together like the boys they are.

It Worked Out a Way to Survive

The Venus he gave me ate another daddy
longlegs. They were still... more

It’s after midnight and Jason is awake, trying to ignore the suspicion his twin sister is masturbating on the... more

Nobody knows Ralph has a flask tucked in his front shirt pocket. His blue Hi-Mart vest hides the bulge it makes beneath the fabric.

We ate dinner with our heads down masticated silence Mom slathered hot sauce on everything including Dad’s words and the ones he... more

I’ve started to clench my teeth before falling asleep. 

A conversation with Patrick Coleman, loosely around his new book, The Churchgoer (Harper Perennial).

This is a story about... more

FANTASIA FOR FOUR HANDS

Hello. This is my body. 
It makes me terrible. 
Someone opens it... more

He was super into God. He was super into church. And he was super into me

We amass, aquatic, shoal of the legless. The one grown webby with appendages pads onto the raspy sand, and we surface to see: gleeful and aroused... more

after Britney Spears

The camera pans—is this... more

There was a Help Wanted sign at the florists. I had a car, so I walked in and applied. This was a time in my life when I’d decided anyone could do anything. In other words, I was an artist.

Precarious Poem

I’m craigslisting again and this time, 
I’m in Portland hanging plants

next to... more

He had one of those cool lighters – brushed metal case, tiny chimney with a pattern of holes, bright heat when flint... more

When I was young, I never kept a journal. Instead, my understanding of the world—and myself within in it—got wound up in 500-plus battered tapes that have followed me through life.

We’re practicing doing timed tests for the AP Language and Comp exam, and the prompt Ms. Anniker gives us is “What Are You Proud Of?” I think immediately, “my chin” 

"Honestly, I don't care if language overtakes story." 

Amy lives right off Pike beneath a fire escape in one of the many alleys that connect to the street. She’s fifteen years old and loves Madonna.... more

The thing I can't wrap my head around, when it comes to the 2003 Detroit Tigers, is what it must have... more

I was standing in line for a movie and a movie played in my head.
I was standing in line for a movie and the movie I was waiting to see... more

This was the summer after seventh grade, and all my thoughts were sinful, according to the church. The year before I had confessed all my crimes and a man in hip waders held me under water until all the evil in me had fled the power of Christ’s approach, but now, in the early stages of my adolescence, I was obsessed with the opposite sex.