My wife and kids and I are driving around in New Orleans, not too far from where I spent the first... more
When I was younger, if you had a hard time following rules, you became an artist.
Now, if you have a hard time following rules, you become an entrepreneur.
People in the literary world follow rules the most.
I was seventeen, so he was a man — had I been older, maybe not.
From a Wisconsin "Dogman," to a 400-pound giant turtle, to Martians that serve pancakes, B.J.... more
Show her face to the camera. Put your finger in her mouth.
I felt as cold and empty as that body lying in that casket lined with fabric smooth and silky white, so different from what usually cradled my grandma’s skin, those soft, oft-washed dresses always topped with a floral apron.
Bible | Vers
Top to Bottom | scan my profile | For Christ’s Sake | Sing Jesus’ Name | I gospel... more
There’s a song in my figurative head
that I can’t shake loose.
When I was a body,
I did so many things with my... more
05:05 am. My eyes open. A faint pearly blade of light squeezing past the blind. The distant metallic scrape of a moving tram.
i’ve never attended a wedding and i wasn’t going to start now. my muscles were aching and my jaw was carrying a million bees, terrorizing the sides of my ears and throat.
By the time the keys were in my eager teenaged hand, this car had been through some shit. Even ignoring the holes burned into the driver’s-side door, the missing half of the left side mirror, and the warped, discolored metal down the rest of the vehicle, the car was 13 years old already, and it looked it.
The cherry and strawberry seasons have passed; the apples are reddening. Only a few games remain. A Pit Spitter lays down a bunt, and the runner on third crashes in: a perfect suicide squeeze.
All that whimpers isn’t want.
One spring, I pulled
a reed from an oboe.
I planted it by a pond.
Instantly, it... more
Morning gets angry and destroys a city
not New York, too obvious, but suppose
it’s on the coast. Suppose we’re the first to... more
There is snow that falls like a snake. It comes from the sky hissing and finds a bush to hide beneath. The leaves on the branches of the River... more
“Well, just be careful you don’t get caught with your pants down at the wrong kinda toilet.”
He’s soaked in sweat already and all he’s done is drive. He must know what they are here to find.
in response to a student evaluation for a science fiction class, Fall 2018
Student, it’s true—I prefer... more
Sometimes I want to take the industrial strength green Korean loofah, my sandpapery mitten, and just scrub at my face until huge chunks of flesh tear away and roll into brown fleshy noodles and fall to the floor. Afterwards, I won’t be bloody and flayed, all raw nerve endings and hamburger meat, I’ll be smooth as a peeled egg, soft and firm and pliant to the touch.
My heart is open. I can feel it. It’s never open. This can’t be a coincidence. This—
My father’s disjointed rage has shocked him—I’ve seen that look before. He no longer draws from his beer even as Dad tilts his own way up.
Cars fly by, the collective braking tantrum screech, the only speech the boy knows well enough.
Goats and cows’ dreams have little pull yet. Cheese
is still cheese, piston driven milkers likely painful. The future
of... more
