I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I meant “eight” when I typed “ate” because there’s gremlins in the keyboard again. They time-traveled to the present from World War II to take contract jobs from Mark Zuckerberg or Vladimir Putin or Marilyn Manson, all to make me type so rottenly. “Alt-right” when I meant “alright,” “mayfly” when I… Read More Gremlins in the Keyboard
They tore down the church on Cathedral Hill back in 1999. Pilates, all of them, washing blood off their hands with a shrug and reference to a local vote. They never did build the shopping center they claimed they would. A patch of concrete foundation, all that’s left of the place. And the name of… Read More Cathedral Hill
sometimes these sentences i carve out on page leave my control, a tree fallen without the, “timber,” so anyone could get concussed by its falling limbs and i realize how ludicrous that sounds, that i control this pen, but not my need for you, the way a whale needs oxygen, just has to surface. you… Read More Santa Claus, Indiana
(originally posted September 18th, 2014) Is it ever too late to start a new year? Even when the leaves drop dead, the grass dries up, and the schoolboys and schoolgirls eye the pumpkins in the classroom, knowing they’re hopeful beacons of Halloween? Mistakes, goes the refrain, were made. Manias contaminated entire populaces in the spring,… Read More Mistakes Were Made
(originally posted September 12th, 2014) They set the ocean on fire. The inks of navy and aquamarine and cerulean ignited and dissolved into flame that had no center, no core of neon blue energy. No cool spectrum remained, only the flares flipping into the air like beggars’ hands. An anguish articulated only by the crackle… Read More Neogenesis
(originally posted September 10th, 2014) This bread won’t stop crumbling. These glaciers won’t stop fragmenting. The world will not forestall its turning. This freeway won’t stop clogging. The lateness will not abate, and the boss won’t keep from angering. The job will not avoid dead ending, and that suburban angst grown up with, it maintains… Read More Biohazard Remediation
(originally posted September 5th, 2014) The material world. Slow dances. She. She laughs in his twirls. His masculine, confident twirls. In a nighttime park. I watch from a covert bench. Watch them spin and spin. They think they’re alone, this night theirs. Her clothes float. His arms have a discipline, his steps, a martial deliberateness.… Read More Bon Anniversaire
(originally posted September 4th, 2014) We were all heroes in that sea of stars. Dying sunlight hit our receding hairlines. We all had receding hairlines, even (it seemed) the girls, they had their hair cropped back in tight buns and were Queen Elizabeths but without the pancake makeup. We were all foreheads in that building,… Read More Exploring Design Space
(originally posted June 16th, 2017) Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” King quotes, of course, are no substitute for actual Biblical verses. Yet how can one view the impassioned cries of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and multiple others as not mirroring that… Read More The Needed Recognition of Tension in Faith
(originally posted November 29th, 2016) Immediately after the election came a string of apologies on social media, regrets expressed to ethnic minorities, queer minorities, women, and the occasional reference to the severely impoverished. All these groups will truly suffer under a Republican presidency, as they historically have every time before. The flaw in these apologies,… Read More Class Identity, Intersectionality, and the Failure of Democratic Framing
