She never hails me friendly over the fence, it is always a conspiracy. She clucks my name quietly from her garden like a secret, her tight curly hair, a dark comb and cape. “Can you hear the boys crowing?” she asks, a pained apology in her eyes. “I didn’t know what they were, but now […]
Read more "nested"It’s all about confidence, they said. You have to have as much chutzpah as all those dudes who self-publish poem after poem about road kill and baseball, girls, their fathers, chess, sailing, yeats’ gyre and bukowski’s pocked face. I was bold to write aloud before three teachers said they liked my poems. I got excited […]
Read more "My Life As a Published Man"I’m writing about food foraging for my MFA. I advise others to be extremely careful when foraging for wild food. Avoid poisoning yourself. “When in doubt, throw it out,” and all that. But I can be rash when deciding what to put in my own mouth. My thesis adviser suggested I explore this paradoxical way […]
Read more "My Father on Foraging for Berries and Bears"Looking back you remember thinking, this is how your end could start. You’re in the shower, washing the remnants of a solid workout down the drain. As you reach for the soap you secretly hope that afterwards you’ll look in the bathroom mirror and glimpse that abdominal definition you’ve been striving for. You rub the bar […]
Read more "Talking myself through a cancer scare"Some things never change. In very recent history, male writers were published in major literary journals with greater frequency than women writers. Last year, the PDXX Collective brought you a response to an official count of this phenomenon as tabulated and published by VIDA, a national grassroots organization that investigates gender inequality in publishing. With […]
Read more "VIDA Count 2013 Preview"You may have read my post about deciding to take a school trip to Istanbul. While the experience was enriching, thrilling, educational, and cemented my love for the city, this one experience stands out because it causes great pain in my heart: feeling ostracized in a mosque. I have some ideas of why I felt […]
Read more "A Letter to My Son: Ostracized From Islam"The following is based on an interview with a 30-year-old Muslim woman on May 22, 2012 near Chicago. Part I All my father does is sit in his chair and watch politics. Talk politics. Think politics. The Palestinian conflict is deep-seated in his every moment.My father was born in a village outside Ramallah, my mother […]
Read more "Interview with a First-generation American Muslim"The Eastbank Killer – A Serial Novella Attorney Donna Bosque finds her life turned upside down when an attractive associate at her firm becomes convinced the Eastbank Killer, who has been terrifying Portland, is directly linked to their law firm. Start from the beginning Previous chapter “I drink red,” Donna said. Merington was already pouring […]
Read more "Eastbank Killer – Chapter 9"I don’t know how I ended up watching the season finale of South Park, which originally aired on December 11th. Retracing my steps, it looks like I was in a gulley between American Horror Story: Coven and The Daily Show, and the cartoon seemed more appealing than a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives rerun. This particular […]
Read more "Wendy Wept"
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