Alcoholism

The Good End of Pleasant Street

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

Our Fraying Hearts

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

Bars

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

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

Pockets

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

Shoplifting cigarettes, running the pool table, creating a “pocket prairie”

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.

Expats

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

Rhonda tended to take in people—and cats, Jessica said. Spending about $150 of her monthly Social Security check on cat food, in addition to supporting her meth habit, had left her broke most of the time.

The Lonesomest Sound in the World

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

When the kids came to school, we tortured them because they smelled and wore the same clothes every day, until they just shut down, not even looking at us after a while, never raising their hands, never saying a word.

Getting Dressed

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

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

Start with Overripe Bananas

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

You have to start with overripe bananas. Really overripe—not yellow with a couple of streaks but two thin-skinned ones that can hardly contain their own soft flesh. You should be able to smell banana from across your kitchen.

Rough Road

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Beat from cycling around town all morning collecting rejections, I scarfed down a fast-food burger that settled into my gut like wet plaster. I just wanted to sit in the air-conditioning and pretend things were going to be OK, but a kid in his polyester uniform started slinging ammonia water from a mop bucket, and the smell made my sinuses hurt.

Brother, Electric

cow2pie@aol.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

He grabs my hand, and static electricity snaps between us, as though he is coursing with energy. He blows his hot breath on my frozen fingertips and tells me it’ll be OK.

Look at Me Longer

scotto.writing@gmail.com — Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I turned a corner and saw a tall, handsome man staring right at me. He wore a green sweatshirt, black basketball shorts, and white Nikes. His face was expressive, wise, large-featured. Five-o’clock shadow. A shock of salt-and-pepper hair.

He was me. I was looking into a mirror.

I usually thought of myself as a slob: Dry, blotchy skin. Big belly. Thinning hair. But my reflection was actually pretty nice-looking. I only became a “slob” when I realized who I was looking at, when I understood the mess behind the face.

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.

A Seat at the Table

wyattww@gmail.com — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400

The terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not talk about that often enough.

Fantasy

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:00:00 -0500

Calling a 1-900 number, moving to the tropics, writing fan fiction

What I Don’t Tell My Wife

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:05:00 -0400

There are many things I don’t tell my wife of ten years: Because she has asked me not to. Because she carries her own burdens. Because she has told me mine are too much.

The Art Of Living

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:05:00 -0400

My fly line unspools across the water like a long sentence / whose final punctuation is a grizzly hackle tied by a friend. / He clamped his fly vise to the branch of a fallen pine / right after we arrived by mule train at this Montana river.

Portrait Of US

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

Monica Jane Frisell and Adam Scher have been traveling the U.S. in their “nomadic photo ark” . . . . attempting to find evidence of what we share by making large-format portraits of Americans from different states and recording short audio interviews with them.

Pain

Wed, 31 May 2023 04:00:00 -0400

Breaking a leg, giving birth, suffering for beauty

Learning The Hard Way

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

Hitching a ride, trusting a partner, marrying the same person three times

Hey, Man

scotto.writing@gmail.com — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 04:05:00 -0400

You’d donated most of your organs, so the body in your coffin was basically a scarecrow version of you. . . . Thank God they don’t do brain transplants, I thought. Anybody who’d gotten your brain would’ve woken up from surgery a total asshole. I heard you laughing at this. I could remember your laugh really well. It was a letdown that I could hear it only in my head.

Blue Ladder

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

My uncle finally kicked me out, and I was living in the twenty-four-hour Kroger on Fairhaven Avenue in Tustin, California, pilfering food and sleeping at the coffee bar. One day Mr. Muniz pushed a cart through the frozen-foods section where I was fanning myself, and he stopped. I’d gotten ugly, my face wasn’t right, and I could tell he was thinking, What the hell?

In Vino Veritas

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0400

What if . . . our taste for alcohol has been strengthened and preserved in our gene pool for functional reasons? Then we might look at intoxication not as a side note but as part of the story of what makes us human.

Ten Years Sober

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0400

We all need to accept that the world at large is indifferent to our existence. Most of our decisions matter only to us. I could drink tonight, and no one would know.

Emotional Morons

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0400

Kayla and I were not friends, so when she called me out of the blue, on a blistering July morning, to ask if I wanted to join her and her dad on the lake for the day, it was like NASA calling to invite me to the moon.

The Memory Of Clay

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:05:00 -0400

For all Dad’s skill with wood and tools, his life was sloppily built. Some sorrow whose origins I can’t name led him to consistently misread the ruler. What does a son do with the wreckage of his father’s life forty-six years after his death?

My Mother Returns, This Time For Good

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 05:10:00 -0500

Six weeks ago my wife walked into our living room to find me curled up on the couch, sobbing. In our twenty-one years of marriage we had experienced a lot of griefs, big and little, but she’d never seen me cry like this.

Getting Started

Thu, 27 May 2021 04:00:00 -0400

After graduation, after a divorce, after an election

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.

Something I Might Say

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:00:00 -0500

I read all the literature hospice brought: Give the gift of comfort and calm. Give them support, permission. Give them more than they gave you.