On a bench outside the classroom on our fifteen-minute break, I close my eyes and practice the grounding exercise my therapist taught me earlier that week. Facing the rush hour freeway, I try to

(Iowa City 1995)

What I think I want, is Inez . . . Fuck! Now it’s a blur. Drawing. Rather, a dream in which I’m drawing.

I came from the city, was sort of swept away by the bristles of time and love and bowel-upsetting uncertainty, and I am now in a dust pan called Mora County, New Mexico. Dust pan is not derogatory; it’s a just a place where things end up.

the history of countries is the story of roaming. And maps are relatively new inventions in the human narrative 

ON Drugs, Magic, and the Sanctity of Losing Your Shit

Like any self-respecting Gen-Xer, I spent the bulk of my teenage years doing drugs. I tried all kinds: ecstacy, mda, coke, meth… I even tried

Until this year, I didn’t know I get seasick.

I board a boat on the northern coast of what they now call Sri Lanka, outside my ammah’s hometown, and I sit down below. I accept my friend’s offer of

Normal: a word-world I, as cisgender, could claim. That she couldn’t. So many label traps. Normal, gender, virginity. Sarah.

3/31: The day is young. Dress smart today Capricorn, big things on the horizon. When standing in front of new people, don’t forget to smile. People are drawn to you, but you forget to drop your

My mother mentioned Darren to me only once. I was in college by then.

Some days, Luke told me it hurt to sit down. Those days we played in the woods.

We took tarps and string from the shed to make tents between trees. We stole pennies and nickels from the house, put

My writing professor said to me that in order to get better, you had to dismantle the person you were, because that person was killing you. I kept wondering: Why did a killer love me?

My trip had begun in Seattle, where the past few years had served up one setback after the next. I had been cut loose by my latest not-quite-boyfriend.

Twenty seven notes Gabriel Smith took at Bethnal Bust Up, York Hall, London, March 7th

If boxing is a sport, then it is the most tragic of all sports because more than any human activity it

You don’t see her for several years after that, minus a brief and sweet span of days that following summer, in your usual place. You play Bob Dylan’s Mama, You Been on My Mind squeezed on a piano bench with her.

Your gym is perhaps your favorite thing about Hattiesburg. Your student budget is tight, but you’ll manage to eek out thirty a month somehow—you have for the last three years.

The day before isolation, I celebrate my birthday, unwed, the first of its kind in my adult life, my divorce from a great man with whom I shared an OK eleven years, finalized by way of a $250 internet

I’d spend the night there on Saturday nights, get up Sunday morning and drive to my church and preach. I didn’t find God because I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me but I didn’t find him either.

Maybe you can do this. It’s not your idea. But maybe.

I’d learned from Rock of Love that a diabetic’s rollercoaster blood sugar is a constant interruptor at best.

I was the only person in my family this level of depravity happened to.

I followed him up the stairs up to his apartment and once inside he made parachutes, wrapping loose MDMA in tissue paper.

No cheating; you've got to keep your fingers touching my fingers. Good. Remember to keep your hands flat. Flat and steady and ready.

When I broke up with you, I thought you might kill me, and somehow, I was bored.

Xenia and I had been cheating on each other with the same woman for about three months

You will read my restrained but subtly brutal birth story and finally recognize that we who give birth are dauntless soldiers returning to the fight and we are also the old men ignoring the bombs because we have animals at home we love too much to go on and we have never felt more alive than we do right now.