It’s Saturday night, and I am cleaning the kitchen because it’s easier than cleaning up my life; I am putting away dishes because I... more

What do you get when you mix and elephant with a rhino?

Elephino.

That joke has always held a special place with me. I first heard it... more

“You are cursed,” my Dida said, solidifying the bells of mortality that were ringing.
“Ki?” I responded, my eyes wide with fear and panic.
“There is a beauty mark here inside you. It means you are cursed with sexiness.”

It doesn’t matter how many times the essayist — the blind essayist — tries to write what it’s like being in the driver’s... more

I made eye contact, made the purchase, stored it between other magazines on my bookshelf.

On the street, the music thundered from an unseen source, day and night – but it was, oddly, only audible from the sidewalk. Once ensconced inside our house, we forgot about it, as we neglected so many external things during medical school.

These days writers are obsessed with themselves and once upon a time they were exactly the same way, obsessed with... more

A spoonful of vanilla ice cream crosses oceans of history. Hold that dollop on the back of your tongue.  Consider.

Today,... more

“God is good!” my uncle Albert chanted, and his congregation agreed in full force.

YES! AMEN! YES GOD, AMEN!

“God is willing to... more

My sister once told me if you clench your butt cheeks together you won’t cry, a tip she learned from a hairdresser. I took a deep breath and went back to my office with my boss, squeezing my ass cheeks as tight I as could. 

At eighteen I got two stars tattooed on my ankle. I used to tell people a variety of stories: they were falling stars, they were the stars from... more

The following is either a CONFESSION or a LIE or a LITERARY EXPERIMENT. Choose Your Own Adventure. If you would like... more

What I've written here is, of course, something that Kurt Cobain will never know. On April 8, the discovery... more

This wasn’t supposed to be an essay.

I became obsessed with the idea of bunting. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted to make my own.

After I turned thirty-five, the age of forty circled me like a shark. My dread of it intensified with each passing year. On my thirty-eighth... more

Ironically, hours before we went to see Whoopi, I texted two friends from my bathtub that I didn’t think I would ever write another essay. It was “too hard.” “People only want to vilify you, so they look for words to use to that end, and ignore the rest of what you’ve said.”

Jack Daniel screams his way down my throat & it’s a dry thrust.

Now I’m not dating anymore and I use the gold duffel bag to haul my belongings from one house-sitting gig to the next.

At first, it seemed like a poet’s dream day job. A job of watching, then describing.

“Bit ‘im in the jugular,” the truck driver tells me about the bear ten feet away, describing the day the bear went crazy.

The morning of our second date I drew a card – now I can’t remember which one...

It’s someone’s job to bury the dead.

On my last night in Zhenjiang, the three other laowai and I—each of us western foreigners: three upstaters and a guy from Toronto—walk the condominium-lined miles out to the banks of the Yangtze river.

Summers to Harridge, April 20, 1950: I am writing to inform you of the changes in the Washington ball park. It is rather difficult to... more