5. I disappear one afternoon. I’m five years old. My mother finds me in a neighbor’s closet where the neighbor’s five year-old son and I...

4. My brother is an infant. Baby skin. I can’t get enough of that skin. I maul him. I kiss his crown. I carry him from room to room. Tiny...

3. I’m four and a half years old. I hold up 4 pudgy fingers to tell you so. I make sure to add the half. With voice. The half is...

2. My second birthday. Or perhaps it is my third. I climb out of my crib to spy my mother making a cake in the kitchen. The smell of...

1. I’m bare skinned and belly down on a lamb skin rug. I’m watching myself in a mirror fixed to one side of a triangular plastic toy. The...

I hold her as an hour glass. perfect. creature. sand that tick tick ticks through that neck. in night, I hold her on her side watch the...

my life has been as ordinary as any other in that it has been extraordinary in corners built for my sole perception the magnificence of...

are you rain, she says. yes, yes, I am. how did you know? I say. “my grandmother was rain. Flash Flood. You.” she wants to know what my...

Healing is not a graph one can point to and there is no one course of action that can lead us there. It is a mercurial act of will and a...

my body is a container memories and thoughts more than architecture I wear the cake I ate with pride I wear the hurts I ached right there...

I’ve seen God in a ripped sky bleeding over a volcano’s crown I’ve seen God in your hands I’ve seen God in your mouth in cool water that...

perfectionism is a drug free and lethal spiny thorns that press to a fixed place cracks give me peace it wasn’t always the case I want to...

New York poet Eileen Myles has always been known as “Uncle Eileen” to her nephews. It sort of knocked my socks off when I first heard...

At 10 p.m. we have missed our train to Varanasi. We drive to the next village to catch a train from there. We are advised by our guide to...

In Cuba, there is a saying, “If you don’t love your country, you don’t love your mother.” Although we can all agree that loving your...

Steve McQueen’s Shame begins in a bed. Brandon’s bed. And in some way the film never leaves it. At least the viewer’s mind never travels...

there’s kombucha in my fridge and crystals in my pockets totems they make me feel good i curse like a sailor i like sailors my dad was...

I used to shame myself for procrastinating before sitting down to write on days I have set aside for working. I would putter and clean...

Listen on Soundcloud Curls I cut from my brother’s baby head when I am five and jealous. The light that hits a river bank in Yosemite...

my phantom limb has a mouth where the knee bends teeth like razors that bite in night when the earth falls still. sugar in the grill that...