Parker is the coolest kid in fourth grade. Everyone thinks so. If Parker says something is cool, it’s cool. Period. I don’t know any better, yet. Parker says this band that sings a song about Buddy Holly is cool. I ask around but none of the other fourth graders know what I’m talking about.
Depression, like any beast, digests
only what is edible.
To make your joy indigestible,
follow closely these steps:
Learn... more
I could have no path, no idea of what I should be or how I should live. I could skate through neighborhoods, where I wouldn’t find a Mormon church or anyone who knew I had strayed from the path I was raised to follow
My father inhales smoke from a lone Marlboro,
shadowed against a sun colored like dead autumn leaves.
He gently... more
Plastic and puke co-exist. Children frolic in the belly, the guts and intestines, the ballpit.
The year is 2019 and all our conversations are now about water. Even the conversations not about... more
The funeral is over, Eliza is back at work, and she has eaten dinner at home three times now, once alone, even.
A Queer Translates Rilke
I long to know his self-described “epic head”
with my eyes closed. But... more
The source was unreliable. It's possible that I was the source.
Patience is one virtue that me and Wayne both got in spades.
The king’s first wife went crazy and no longer obeyed him, so he sent her away.
I walked through the senior hallway, heart beating fast. The boys’ stares burned into my skin as they whispered things to each other.
In my head, dating women was a body competition.
My mother tells me how my father died. I’d learned only a week before that he had gangrene in his toes because of a sore he’d let fester.
“If you have to say you’re fine, you’re probably not,” the crow replied.
Because let’s face it, boiled tea does not meet my privileged standards for heat.
Lenore was at the cusp. I’m cusping, Percy, she rasped. Percy was unsure what to do about it. Press forward? Hang back?
I remember being young and small and barefoot on the concrete floor: look closely and see how the cicada shells vibrate as the Texas Hill Country winds sift in.
In jazz, woodshedding refers to the shed you sequester yourself in, as a young musician learning the craft, a private space to develop your own style, away from prying eyes or critical ears.
Married twenty years today, Heather and Vic play that game.
i trapped pete wentz
in a pastoral landscape
It’s the first time I remember feeling that superstrong tween indignation that he’d taken something that was supposed to be just mine.
At six years old, my father wanted to introduce me to his church friends. As a part-time pastor, it was crucial he make a good first impression.
