Articles

1 I had just closed the window curtains when Keith arrived. The end of the workweek brought a relentless spell of exhaustion and with it the unwillingness to cook. I had a container in the microwave of leftovers from the night before.  He followed me to the kitchen, and I felt his eyes as I …

The linguistics professor calls him “Pingüino,” but you don’t know why. Maybe it’s how he wears black cargo pants splotched in white paint. How he saunters into class late each morning with a perfect smile across his wide face. Maybe it’s his slow way of talking, and his eyes that are always looking farther than …

I used to grit my teeth—out of habit. By the end of the day my jaw would hurt. At night I wore a mouthguard around the house same as the kids wear for ice hockey, to remind me not to clench and grind. My wife wondered if it had to do with repressed anger—grinding my …

Dear reader, The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, with nearly two million people currently locked up, not including the thousands of individuals held indefinitely in ICE detention centers or the hundreds recently sent to CECOT in El Salvador without the due process promised by the U.S. constitution. In terms …

I want you to remember this where I live program the coordinates into your internal compassembed the the earth’s magnetic field onto your temporal lobe where time and space dwell as electricity shed your armor spell-cast bulletproofmarked with attempts on your lifeand tattoo a map onto your integumentof how to find melearn to navigate the …

A position opened at a new nursery in town, so I applied, eager to apply my burgeoning succulent and mulching knowledge, knowing my retail experience was limited to a few months behind a dry cleaner’s counter, counting on this opportunity to rescue me from a life working maintenance at a chemical plant. The interview went …

Because the road will press a body into the pavement until it is washedin summer storms, I dragged the woodchuck’s rigid body to the shoulder with mullein leaves.We called them lamb’s-ear when we were young. Mammals,milk bred, the blackest soilmeans growth. These were dry and yellowed in the gravel ditch; not the scoop of remnantvalley …

Twenty-five years ago, I found out my friend, Luis “Louie” Rodriguez, came home to Rhode Island to die. Louie had AIDS. He knew the day was dawning. He didn’t want any of his friends to see him die. I didn’t get the chance to see him, to say goodbye, tell him how much I love him, …

is what you hear the ranger say.Your sneakers trace the snapped-grasshalos of his, a single braid laid like wet bread in the soft dough of his shoulders: They are actually one large system beneath the soil. Hidden but not. What a beautiful way of saying he knows. Or alsoIs. Bundled in the soft safety of …

how often will the same poets write about the leaves change? how many times will we turn on the news to hear of a groundhogs head turning in february?it is groundhog day after allhow often will we hear of cherry blossoms birthing in spring? how many times will we hear of the first snowfall in …