Browse Topics
Childhood
My Father Tore Out Of The House
I could have forgiven him for that — I knew I had done a bad thing — but I couldn’t forgive him for what he did next, at least not until years later, when my own legacy as a flawed father helped me understand how love exists alongside anger.
December 2009
Poems
— from “A Warning” | Today I feel better, because I woke thinking everything that disappears from the planet / might reappear somewhere else. The thought was grand at first.
August 2009Fences
Access to water, a moose disappearing into the trees, the Israeli security fence
August 2009
The Way To Mercy
There are three things you need to be a smelt fisherman: a net, a bucket, and your thumb. There is only one thing you need to be a cadaver, and that’s to be dead. My father and I had gone smelt fishing each spring ever since I’d turned seven. Now it was 1972, I was a boy of ten, and Richard Nixon had just been reelected president.
July 2009
Curvature
“Please, call me Dr. Jim.” My father, whose boots were caked with hog manure, appeared relieved, and they sat down to review what would happen on the day of my sister’s surgery. Dina had to have her back operated on, or her S-shaped spinal column would eventually crush her heart.
June 2009
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today