On my first day in Italy, my host sister Federica and I walked together by the Po. We walked down the white stone quays. Orange enamel streetcars slid over the arched bridge and vanished into the cypress-heavy hillside. Boys in long boats dipped their oars. We walked up the stairway and into the Vittorio square. […]

No matter how I try my hair won’t grow back. The power’s gone out, someone saw wires arcing down the block.   We find a lantern in the garage that still casts enough light. The time is never right but this is probably not the time to say it.   Something’s burning in the house, […]

Fence 39 has coalesced during the 21st century’s first pandemic, a globalinflection point — or ongoing duration — from which we must all pivot. No matter the scope of the task before us, we ask ourselves how do we do this, now? How can we do this now? And the fuzzy and foggy shape of […]

The army held the baby in chains. It broke free. It was quite easy. At 158 feet high, it towered over the army and its tanks. It tore the metal wrapped around its wrists and legs with its eight baby teeth. The baby wobbled toward the freight train yard, as it liked trains, liked the […]

One year at summer camp, I met a girl who told me about all the different things she’d managed to send, unpackaged, through the US Postal Service. I sorely wish I remembered her litany of unexpected items. The one thing I do recall is that she had once addressed a shoe, a Converse All-Star, she […]

Floorworker I thought: I like taking pictures. Facilitating the fulfillment of others’ image-making could be an honest way to make a decent living. It’s tangential to my interests at best, but at least I could feign interest, more so than at the interview with the editorial department of the luxury magazine with photo spreads devoted […]