A dispatch from 2016 and now. 

This Essay Isn't About the NBA Finals Because No One Here Cares About the NBA Finals

Jurgen Klopp, the coach of Liverpool’s soccer team, wears a black shirt and pale-framed glasses, just like the

The man I love who does not love me back sends me someone else’s tweet. The only text is a hashtag: Notre Dame. The video hasn’t loaded. A week before, the Notre Dame women’s basketball team made it

The first doctor who called said I couldn’t play. The scan showed stress fractures and the only remedy was rest. It would have been a blessing the diagnosis came between seasons but, for me,

The world does not write enough odes
to in-betweenness—the way you can be
together / feel apart / apart / feel together.
In a room of dozens, in a city of millions,
the mashing of MacBook keys

As teenagers, my friends and I spent Friday nights driving backroads, throwing soda cans at street signs. The wind would be cold, the music would be loud, and sometimes, a can would bounce back and

The bum drags himself off the floor. Then comes on nice. Real buddy buddy shit.

And christ it's gonna be hot inside the tiny bar where SUMAC is playing tonight. I should've stayed home. Like I always do. An old man on his couch.

Then I hear it. Loud as the train coming into the station. Fuckinragabagagrrahfuuck. Ah ha. Of course. The unmistakable call of the down and out drunk.

Radio Tower, 4yrs old

The radio tower had big cones on top. We were in the car and I said to mom, “What are those?” She didn't know so she said, “Oh, that's where Mickey Mouse lives.” I was

Had a little accident last night Stevie, my boss yells. Tote fell over in the back of a truck. Someone's gotta clean up all that fish. I turn my head from him. Stare off out passed the end of the harbour. Where the horizon and Lake Eerie meet. Dissolve into one another. The breeze in my hair. Thinking why me?

I don't like most people. And have been jealous of Bud for ages. With reason.

Now here I am. The same fucking predicament all over. The universe testing to see what I'll do.

Sitting in the Montreal bus terminal I make a decision. To eat the last of my weed candies. 

1.
My father died on Christmas Eve, 1986. I was three years old. When my mother broke the news, I responded in a startling way. "Death is just a figure of speech," I told her. Of course, at age

It must've been the late nineties. I was collecting welfare at the time. I couldn't have been more then 17. Summer vacation was coming to an end. The high school I attended was close to my

1.

I cut through the small park. Come out the other side. As soon as I do I feel eyes on me. I look up from the sidewalk. He's standing down the block and on the other side of the busy cross

Of course the laundromat goes quiet. I glance around. We're all shocked. I catch the eyes of a little girl. Hair in pigtails. She looks scared.

I came at reading this book as I do most things. Like a fool. I expected what the cover hinted at. A memoir. Some casual retelling of Norm's life. I expected quaint takes of rural Canadian life

By the time Zoe and I started down the Overseas Highway, we had been living a nomadic lifestyle out of our 1995 Corolla for nearly four months. 

I got my period the moment we got to the hotel. Getting my period wasn’t going to affect any of my plans, and was no big deal, really, aside from the fact that I refuse to pay attention to my body so am always completely surprised when my period comes. As such, I had brought no supplies to Miami with me.

I make him coffee, I make hot chocolate for his kids, and sometimes I buy his weed.

I wanted this essay to be about love. I wanted it to also be about my grandfather and Arkansas and my copy of Ain’t Doing Too B-A-D, Bad, a live jazz record by The Bobby Bryant Sextet. 

FUCKING HELP ME

½ cup (one stick) of unsalted butter (higher quality butter = better tasting cannabutter)

¼ ounce of weed, VERY finely ground