Browse Topics
Identity
Milk
Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote
June 2026
Wild Animals
Swimming with whale sharks, hearing a mountain lion, refusing to eat a snake
November 2025
Getting Dressed
Sleeping in uniform, layering against the cold, wearing your spouse’s jeans
September 2025
Manicure
What remains of their visit is memory, residue, / trickles of sand from our trip to the beach. / I confess, I like my bedazzled talons . . .
August 2025There, Here, Jazz
The first time I walked into our new old house, it was the light / that surprised me—how much of it fell through the four windows / facing south and landed wide across the floorboards . . .
August 2025Tips
Waiting tables at a diner, playing in a wedding band, giving massages at the Phallus Palace
August 2025
The Seafood Stand
Once, my father drove from New Jersey to California by siphoning gas from strangers’ cars, then sent his van off the Pacific Coast Highway by laying a brick on the accelerator. His mother almost died when she heard.
August 2025
Rough Road
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.
August 2025
Complexion
A prominent birthmark, an elaborate skin-care regimen, a secret ancestry
July 2025
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