Divorce

Separation

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

There is a dead snake on the cracked road. My son says it’s not a dead snake. He says the snake has just shed its skin and left it there.

Bars

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

Practice Losing Everything

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

I challenged my students to interrogate their own religious inheritance, and I spoke frequently of the “ethics of faith.” I asked whether they’d arrived at faith through honest inquiry or by suppressing their doubts.

Four of Cups

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Maybe it was a mistake choosing such a solemn and contemplative place. Raising your voice above a whisper feels like an intrusion. The entrance branches into different rooms, leading you through multiple cultures and eras. You can move through time, follow the various paths available to you. You pick a direction and go.

A Conversation with My Father

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

You could make things up that actually felt more like truth, somehow. You could build a world so precise that other people started to believe it, too. And if you didn’t believe the things my dad said, he’d find a way to make you.

The Night I Don't Remember

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

It doesn’t matter how many AA meetings you go to. As long as you are taking oxycodone and oxymorphone, you’re going to be high, and, as long as you have complex regional pain syndrome, you’re going to be taking something serious for the pain.

Nicknames

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

Get to know Boxcar Betty, Stick Dick, Lali, and the Cajun Asian

Unruly

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

I’m rebellious, defiant, so I’m sent to the barn, driven there by my newly single mom, or my newly single dad, or my grandparents, or someone else. Another parent told my mom I should try horseback riding. Ice-skating and tae kwon do and ceramics didn’t stick, but I can already tell I’m a horse girl.

Stirring the Pot

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Leading a strike, starting trouble between sisters, feeding strangers

Waterfall

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Sex, to me, was like a solvent, cutting through layers of everyday grime. Without it, irritations accumulated with no way of wiping the slate clean; disappointment coagulated into distress. I felt forlorn, restless, and disconnected. Yet no matter how many times I sounded the alarm, my husband never seemed to hear me.

I Always Wanted a Wife

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I didn’t mean to / eat your berries, he’d sing after eating / all the blackberries I’d been saving / for breakfast, and I couldn’t be mad then / because he’d made me laugh.

Don’t Be Alarmed

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0500

After her third glass of wine, Beatrice got up to look at Bert and Martin’s wedding photo, the one with the understated silver frame and the two of them making out like teenagers, Martin’s leg wrapped around Bert’s thigh. It was supposed to be a joke, but they ended up liking it. She stared at it and thought, This was the man I thought I was spending my life with.

Celebrating

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0500

A fiftieth anniversary in Paris, a COVID Christmas in April, a first birthday in America

Getting Dressed

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Sleeping in uniform, layering against the cold, wearing your spouse’s jeans

Collectors

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

For years I’ve hauled my own records from house to house, city to city, relationship to relationship. They’ve outlasted two marriages. They’ve outlasted my father. They’ve outlasted pets and therapists. I’ve got a few rare 45s and some treasured signed Smiths albums, but also twelve-inch singles that are warped or skip. I’ve often thought about getting rid of all of them. Like nearly everyone else, I get most of my music from an app these days. But I’ve kept them the way I’ve kept a few good friends. All of us collectors. All of us records of everything that’s been pressed into us over time.

Glory of the Seas

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A couple of years ago I moved into a retirement village and had to do some serious downsizing. My shell collection went from five shelves to two, not counting the larger shells on lone display and the dozen or so whelks scattered about.

I’ve kept a few rare and uncommon shells: the junonia, the paper nautilus, the carrier shell. I’ve also kept the ones Mother sent me from her own collection. The bleeding tooth. Shells and rocks friends brought me from their vacations. Fossils I picked up on the beach. The purple cockle half Bobby—now Bob—and I found fifty years ago. (He has the other half.) The small, ocean-battered Triton we found during his first visit to Oregon. Various turkey wings, tulips, and spirulas. The fossilized whelk.

My life story on two shelves.

Cows in the Parking Lot of the Emergency Dentist

ajanda@gmail.com — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

The day I waded out of the lake with a stand-up / paddleboard and a split tooth was four days after I knew / I would leave you and eight days before I told you / I knew.

Love and Other Pandemics

jhnelson427@gmail.com — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400

The thing about the apocalypse is that nobody said it would be so beautiful. Spring is letting down her hair. The air is warm, sweet, and clear. Moss drapes over a storm drain, parting for the rush of early-morning runoff. A heavy quiet has descended since we took to our homes, save for the shrieking hawks circling the shuttered strip-mall parking lot next door to my mother’s house outside of Philadelphia.

Sex in the In-Between

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:02:00 -0400

He looked hardy, and, God, I’m a sucker for hardiness. Show me a pocketknife and callused hands, and I’m ready to let you feel me up. His profile had a photo of him holding a giant golden eagle in Mongolia. Looking back, I can see it was partly the eagle I swiped right on.

The Hat

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 05:10:00 -0500

“You found it?” I could tell my answer had pleased him. By then the cashier was ready for me. The checkout had two conveyor belts, and I pushed my cart around to the belt on the opposite side, relieved to be out of close proximity to the man, who now stood across from me.

Long After

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 05:10:00 -0500

Long after we divorced, long after you died of alcoholism, I still remember that day when I stepped out of the clinic, blinked hard against tears, sank into your VW Bug, pulled the door shut, and whispered, “I’m pregnant.”

Pinecones

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

When my wife said, “Linda? Really?” I found myself stammering, denying it. “What?” I asked. “No.” Like my wife was being crazy. Why do men do that: act like women are crazy when they see us most clearly?

Five Months After My First Husband’s Death

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:00:00 -0400

My son posts a picture of himself at three years old / with his father, my first husband, / who still has black curly hair and is looking right out of the photograph / at me, as if he knew this day would come, me staring back / at him and wondering where that moment has gone.

Bottom Feeders

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:00:00 -0400

I feel close to Dad on the drive home, our legs mud-dry and tired, the tackle box between us, the pillowcase full of fish and ice. She’ll never admit it, but Mom will be impressed, I’m sure. In a million years she’d never guess how we caught so many. I’ll never tell.

Inmates

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 04:05:00 -0400

We’d been divorced for almost six years when my ex-wife called and asked if I’d like to live in the bottom apartment of her duplex. I had been moving from place to place, exhausting welcome after welcome, until I’d wound up at my parents’ house, but even they had had enough of me. Sure, they told me, David had died, and they doubted I would ever get over it, but skulking around their house day in and day out was no cure for grief.

Lawrence The Enormous

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 04:00:00 -0400

Slowly, Heidi finished the last of her champagne. She wiped her lipstick from the glass with her thumb, and something stirred inside Lawrence.

Blooming

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 16:00:00 -0400

You can hardly remember now how you would pull out the ribbons she weaved through your hair, launching them into the wind as you pedaled faster on your bike. You have left that girl behind. You believe in the power of ribbons and roses now. You are a woman.

Groundhog, Woodchuck, Whistlepig

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

When he tired of talking, he’d slap a red, hand-shaped conclusion to the quarrel onto my face, pressing his brand upon me, the mark that labeled me as his.

Canoe

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 -0500

When I was young, years ago, canoeing on the green / Green River, with my young first husband, / I wriggled out of my shorts, eased over the lip / of our little boat, and became eel-woman, / naked and glistening, borne along in the current.

Goodbye, Sugar Land

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:05:00 -0400

I was still exploring my power to hurt others and was continually surprised by how potent a single sentence could be. I watched my mother’s face waver and then crack open.