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Parents
Heavenly Bodies
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.
July 2023
Footprints In Alabama
My mama’s family is Alabama for at least four generations. Though I grew up in Illinois, my soul is rooted here. So whenever anyone narrows their eyes and cocks their head to question how I — a Black woman — could possibly love this place, my answer has been: “Because generations of my people’s blood and footprints are in this soil.”
July 2023
Care Warning
Take care of yourself during this essay, whatever that means for you. Perhaps you need to drink a lot of water or unwrap a snack (quietly please!) or play Angry Birds on your phone — whatever works to tamp down your discomfort.
June 2023
Shock Value
In general my job was predicated on my ability to suppress rage. I was an itinerant instructor, an adjunct whose career depended on good reviews from my co-instructor.
June 2023
Chasing Hawks
After the radiation ruined her lungs, / and they’d drained fluid once a month, / then every other week, then every day, / my grandma said she wanted to go / home.
May 2023How To Be A Woman
I learned a woman could wield the power to turn heads. She could capture a room’s attention and make everyone laugh. Everything else I knew of women’s lives told me not to trust this kind of power, but I wanted it nonetheless.
April 2023
The End Of The World
Maybe the end of the world wasn’t fire and explosions and lawlessness and bodies in the streets. Maybe the end of the world was some smaller thing.
March 2023
Ode To My Brother’s Face Tattoos
At twenty you’ve managed to erase / our dad’s face from your own, / blacked out his sharp cheekbones / with roses, marked each eyelid / with an upside-down cross to distract / from his glossy brown irises.
March 2023The Blue Devils Of Blue River Avenue
My mother didn’t like my going over to the Sambeauxs’. There was something mysterious and menacing about that house: a bloodcurdling scream, a silhouette of a knife in the window, a wolf on its hind legs with a leather tail scuffling along behind the juniper trees.
March 2023
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