Afterlife

Struck

tfd3@psu.edu — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

I often wonder if there was something I missed, if the thunder and lightning said something I couldn’t understand.

I Got You

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

“I’m your brother,” the man says, then swallows. He is tall and burly with deep-set blue eyes and thinning hair. He wipes his nose on his flannel sleeve and forks some coleslaw from a plastic container.

The Cat Who Woke Me Up

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

Radar and Revelation

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I don’t interpret UFO phenomena literally. I can’t help but see the moral anxiety and end-of-the-world panic expressed by them. But that doesn’t mean I think these encounters don’t happen.

Reincarnation

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Maybe they would come back as cats and lie on sunny windowsills, not touching but close enough to hear each other breathing, to recognize the shift in cadence marking the slip into sleep. Maybe he’d lick his paws while she slept—though maybe he wouldn’t be a he and she wouldn’t be a she, and it wouldn’t matter.

Sunbeams

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0500

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organized dust—ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Old Souls

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0500

Askey: This is perhaps an ontological question, but do you think James Huston became James Leininger, or is there some other entity—some consciousness, some soul—that was once James Huston and is now James Leininger?

Tucker: The latter much more than the former, I think. We can only speculate, but to my mind there may well be this larger self that has different lifetimes. It’s a core that continues, though the people it inhabits are different. I use the analogy of actors in movies. When you see Jimmy Stewart in a movie, it’s undeniably Jimmy Stewart, and yet he can play very different characters.

Local Haunts

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 04:00:00 -0400

I think every place is haunted to one degree or another. And there will always be people who have a feeling when they visit a place, or believers who will say that they’ve seen something.

The Tunnel

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 04:00:00 -0400

It started with the mouse in the grass by the sidewalk, ants / crawling on its face. Aidan wanted to touch it. I drew him back / and held him. We talked about the gray fur and the tiny ants. He asked / if the mouse was going to go home to his mama and daddy. / No, I told him, the mouse won’t get to go home again.

The Psychic Is In

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:10:00 -0400

Being exposed to psychics at such a young age was like being raised Catholic or vegetarian: you continue living out these belief systems even after they no longer serve you.

Sandwoman

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:05:00 -0400

My insomnia began just when my baby girl started sleeping through the night. Anytime my head hit the pillow, my heart pounded like a million galloping horses, and I would tremble and sweat and eventually get up and stand on our back porch to beg the gods for peace.

Heavenly Bodies

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 04:00:00 -0400

As the new millennium drew near, Erin’s family began preparing for the apocalypse. Jesus was going to return at the stroke of midnight, appearing in the New York City skyline as the ball dropped on TV and the moon turned to blood.

Frights

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 05:05:00 -0500

Ellie was a bedroom ghost: a dream-visitant, a gentle levitator, a classic cold-sweat presence-in-the-corner, but she felt under-sung. It’s not like the old days, she told us. They attribute everything I do to Ambien—

A Thousand Words

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 05:00:00 -0500

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Under The Surface

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 05:00:00 -0500

Cohen: This summer, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine caused controversy by disclosing a conversation with an AI called LaMDA, or “Language Model for Dialog Applications.” The conversation seemed to suggest this AI system had some awareness of itself, but the idea was dismissed by a number of people who work with such systems.

Güzeldere: It’s interesting that Google fired the guy who published that conversation. . . . People are saying, “Oh, it’s just a hack,” but it’s a very impressive hack. I think it will become a product that will be accepted by consumers.

Messages

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 04:20:00 -0400

In the months following Mom’s death in February 2021, I tried to get her to say something to me, to speak to me. If anyone could communicate from beyond, I thought, it was her.

Past Lives

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

I know now this is the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship: right before the woman leaves. It’s when some women get murdered. I was lucky.

Steady Daylight

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 04:10:00 -0400

Today in heaven / my father turned 105. / Finally working steady daylight, / he’s got it knocked: / eight to four, / double time and a half, / no asbestos, / no shoveling slag / on the open hearth, / no boss, / thirteen weeks vacation annually, / kingdom come. / The union up here takes zero shit.

My Mother Is A Peaceful Ghost

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 04:15:00 -0400

In my dreams my mother keeps walking out of the kitchen singing, / You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. / She never sings past the first verse.

Spam From The Dead

jamesdavismay@gmail.com — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 04:10:00 -0400

And two months after the cancer finally ate through / the last tissues that separated him from death, / I get a message from his e-mail address, / urging me to click on a link I know I shouldn’t

Ghosts

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 04:00:00 -0400

On the phone, at a gas station, in our dreams

Sunbeams

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 04:00:00 -0400

I dreamed a few years back that I was in a supermarket checking out when I had the stark and luminous and devastating realization — in that clear way, not that oh yeah way — that my life would end. I wept in line watching people go by with their carts, watching the cashier move items over the scanner, feeling such an absolute love for this life. And the mundane fact of buying groceries with other people whom I do not know, like all the banalities, would be no more so soon.

Ross Gay

This Mortal Coil

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 04:00:00 -0400

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that almost everybody on earth is currently more aware than usual that they’re going to die. . . . People are becoming more racist, xenophobic, and willing to engage in hate crimes than they were in the recent past, for example. But being reminded that we’re going to die can also bring out the best in us, making us more altruistic — at least, toward people we consider to be part of our group.

Maryam And Yeshua

Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400

Maryam: And then the soldiers — oh, the soldiers. I’d take my time with them. I’d do to them everything they did to you. Maybe I’d leave one or two alive so they could learn how life can be a long nightmare.

Yeshua: I tried to make people see that all we have to do is turn around, leave that whining precious self behind, let it go and see the wholeness of God’s Name, but people want magic and miracles and kings—

Also Known As

Wed, 01 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

If you are more close to the dying / than you would like to be, then it is time for the sky / to grow larger than the earth, than the sea even.

That Year

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:05:00 -0400

That year, all our fathers had died or were getting ready to, and they were not taking it well, that is for sure.

The Donkey At The Gates Of The Kingdom Of Heaven

Sat, 01 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Once, a donkey ascended to the shining gates of the kingdom of heaven. The gates were open. The donkey heard music more beautiful than anything he had ever imagined. Each note was a star going supernova, a pack of wolves running down an elk over snow. The song poured itself into the world. The donkey stood transfixed. Without thinking, he opened his mouth wide and brayed.

Three Little Events

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 16:19:00 -0500

But maybe it wasn’t a fluke. Maybe it was a crazy little peek behind the curtain, a dim little whisper of providence from the wings. I had been expected, I was on schedule, I was taking the right journey at the right time. I was not alone.

Essay In Which My Uncle Eddy And I Attend His Funeral

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 -0400

I want to ask Uncle Eddy how it could possibly be that he is sitting in my car as we drive through Katonah, New York, on the way to Danbury, but sometimes in life you just roll with what’s happening and try to make sense of it after it happens.

Family Tree

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

I watch my son high in the magnolia / where branches thin. His sister / at the foot of the tree shrieks for him / to come down and play with her.