Walking home around 4PM last fall, I spotted a can in the middle of the sidewalk. Strikingly silver and apparently full, since it wasn’t blown over. No logo, no nutrition facts, no label, only the reflected sun and these words, in shaky black Sharpie: CUM CAN, PLZ DRINK.
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Bermuda grass is a weed, in my mind. Something unwanted, with a root system extending 35 feet down into the bowels of the wash that runs through my neighborhood. A friend told
What happens inside this high school classroom is the one thing she
It’s easier and faster to cross into Mexico on foot. Park on
this essay was first published in THE DEAD ARE GODS (Melville House, 2023) I am not really a believer. I suppose the best way to describe myself would be atheist, but then
I sit on the rough cement steps of a country convenience store, keeping an eye on Mom. She’s been on the phone for at least an hour. She has a pile of
What are your plans for Mother’s Day? Your question tightens my belly, squeezes my chest, constricts my throat. Your question leaves me gasping for words. Can you tell? When you ask it?
We’re slicing through the Sonoran Desert on Highway 286 in a water supply truck operated by Humane Borders. Faint yellow light rises into the sky behind the mountains, letting us know that
Existing. That was what the weeks after the funeral felt like—a string of continual stresses from the mountain of immediate family responsibilities, punctuated with pangs of overwhelming sadness, and then those sudden
They call you Bella. It’s the name you chose from the film Belladonna of Sadness. At the strip club, where you can tell them what they call you, but not how they
I’m Jane Doe. Isn’t that what we call the unidentifiable dead, those silenced souls that no one nearby recognizes? I have, of course, another name, but for a long time, Jane Doe
History of present illness—A 45-year-old male with no significant past medical history. His symptoms initially beganon Sunday with left ear pain and tooth pain. Also on Monday, he developed a rash over
A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images. The moment we try to force it into a single image, it breaks the frame or burns
Well met, well met, my ain true love/
well met, well met, cried he