writer | editor | artist
after we are dead nobody will remember the way you looked at me this afternoon or the way your hand / grazed by sunlight perfectly described the arc of a bird’s flight someone else will walk along this road / and see that same tree / older now and bent towards some other sky even…
At 2:30 pm today, a huge part of my life is ending. And all day (all week, all month) I’ve been struck by every fucking cliché that people use to comfort or sustain themselves through such moments. They just sneak up on me, wash through me. They’re as insistent and melodramatic and pointless as a cyclone….
(lines from the 2015 film, Joy) there is a gun on the table the only other person in the room got here from hard work patience and humility only one of you can prevail only one of you is like a gas leak silently killing us do you pick up the gun? pick up the…
For Rebecca Jessen Once upon a time I promised to tell you a story about the past (you are going to write about the future). At the film screening, a woman says that this film will never be shown again. It is showing signs of magenta drift. In the future, it will not be (though…
Before the sun and night and the blue sea, I vow To stand faithfully by all that is brave and beautiful; To seek adventure and having discovered aught of wonder, or delight, of merriment or loveliness, To share it freely with my comrades, the Band of Happy Rowers. [1] I told my mother that I…
Our father coming in from the garden, or us going out to stand in the weedy patch of rhubarb and watch him cut, with a knife we were sure grew bloodier with each cut, the long pink stalks. The exact gesture with which he gathered the poisonous leaves in one hand and cut with the…
In 1747 the oldest daughter of a family named Valter had a child, a little girl, who died before her ninth birthday. Nobody remembers what she died of, or why she became a ghost, but there are various stories. Oma told my mother that she believed it was something to do with William IV, Prince of Orange,…
The year of the fire tiger, which should mean that you rise upward: your energy is expansive. Halley’s comet reached its perihelion (its closest point to the sun), during its second visit to our solar system in the last 100 years. Bob Hawke was prime minister, and looked a lot like my father. This was…
The boat slowed and eased towards the shore. The torch that the captain was holding illuminated the truck on the shore and the waiting men, each of them holding a rifle. The soldiers were surrounded by enormous moths, with white wings, their wings flashing reflected light. A magical cloud, attracted to the light, bumping up against the…
I was born by the side of the road in a year nobody remembers. Meaning not that nobody remembers that year, but that nobody who was there when I was born recorded the fact of my birth, or recalls it, or is still alive. Except for my sister. I don’t recall meeting my sister, but…