Hail Satan! I just joined The Satanic Temple, my 42-year-old daughter texted on a ‘till-that-point typical Wednesday. It stopped me right in the middle of my mid-morning channel surfing.
I thought I had let go of the concept of Satan around the same time I ditched the conservative Protestant faith I was raised in. Leaving the church hadn’t been difficult for me.
The power has been out for four days, after a bomb cyclone ripped the tops off redwood trees and deposited them around the neighborhood. Initially, my daughter, well past the cusp of patience, asked for story ideas so that she could write and keep the boredom at bay, but of course, my stories are not what she wants. This habit is about a year old, soliciting my ideas only to find a world of her own—hovering, perfecting the art of the unsaid empty space.
Every night I walk the Walls, a 12,382 cell spreadsheet of the names of women incarcerated at the first state Penitentiary in Baton Rouge between 1833 to 1913. The headers scroll past: Register # Color Name(s) Died Escaped Marks Crime Term Time of Conviction Please Name of Presiding Judge. I am a fickle warden, careless. I move women around like chess pieces until their histories align in some order.
When I was very young, I was returned nightly to this wooden box, lined with straw and scraps of colorful flyers advertising our recent tour stops—now repurposed to warm my nights. As I grew, I was moved first in with the acrobats: a great cozy room of hammocks and bunk beds and foreign accents. By the age of ten, I shared quarters with The Strongest Man in the World
Welcome to the Antique Shoppe. Here you will find chains of entangled generations, layers of dust caked on old family photographs and journals, and rust crawling up the legs of various pedestals. For some, it is your first time inside an antique store, but for most of us, this is the place we’ve referred to as home.
Listen, my dog likes to stare
into mirrors. She’s not narcissistic—
she believes her reflection’s a captive
companion confined behind glass,
a trouble-free and safe friend
I started writing Double Down South based on a memory of a woman who came into a pool hall I hung out in, in Nashville, when I was 13 or 14. The people who ran the place were all called Nick—nasty guys who said things 14-year-olds shouldn’t hear and didn’t understand but knew were inappropriate.
The big yellow bus rumbled along, flattening the grasses along the edge of the road. The fence posts for the ranches the bus was passing stood in line, keeping the fence wires in place, though here and there a sprouting post had already become a tree again. Rain had moistened the land and there were puddles in the road;
There was nothing about my upbringing, on the surface, that would have prepared me for the life I was going to lead—one that now seems fated because of the way I went after my interests, which were not the interests of the people around me. I read constantly. I checked out recordings of Broadway musicals. I was interested in performance.
no stalker got you under his skin
trauma acquired from cinema conglomerates
for our bodies to be more responsive
to all the vibrations and sounds from the screen
in your mind the 4DX movie theater opens its doors wide
Joe, a friend of mine, was unwell. Even after consulting many doctors for over three months and taking numerous medications, there was no relief. They had him undergo many medical tests such as x-rays and scans, and they also examined the blood work, but no one could figure out the illness he was ailing from.
these aren’t my woods anymore / the trees I knew were cut down / and replanted by something / domesticated / malleable / for the paper factory / down the way / the wild tangle / of snarling underbrush / tilted saplings strong enough / to survive hurricane season / creeks rising from the rocks / then sinking into the marsh / sloppy roots crisscrossing over / exposed limestone / in the soil
Craft is what we use to make stronger poems—it’s the way we make these poems so they can enlarge and enrich our lives, open us up, and root us more deeply in our lives and in the world. If we just write in a journal or freewrite, it serves its own purpose, but I find what carries me further into the discovery is the actual making of the poem, the craft of the poem.
Calm app, chiropractic, codeine, Coke (the drink, not the drug, although Freud took cocaine for his), coffee, Compazine suppository (anti-emetic), counseling, craniosacral therapy, dairy-free, darkness, denial, driving myself to the ER with a barf bag, earplugs, energy healing, exercise, Fioricet (butalbital, acetaminophen, and caffeine), Flonase, ginger ale, gluten-free diet, hot bath with ice pack at back of neck, hot shower
This piece has been drawn with a gel pen. The drawing depicts Kolkata, India, my hometown, as it used to be when the British still ruled. The piece represents the city during the 1920s-30s.
It was now half past eight. I had stayed late at the office, finishing up an order for a client. I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Hadn’t switched my brain off for the night when all I wanted to do was relax. But I had to pick up groceries before I could return home. And the phone was buzzing.
The baby was unexpected: a daughter born to my adopted son and his girlfriend. They kept the pregnancy a secret until the size of Tanya’s belly exposed their deception, leaving me shocked and conflicted, emotions the birth of a granddaughter should not bring.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the pregnancy?” I said, “We could have given Tanya a baby shower.”
They came to Restitution City for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the water that came up out of deep wells in the dry terrain was naturally fizzy, said to contain a higher degree of antioxidants and minerals than the average spring water. Plus, it was easier on the pocket than the foreign waters with the fancy names.
One mother gave her child to the sea //
another gave it to her 24-year-old
daughter // one swallowed witch hazel
During that last year you had with them, you picked the boy up every day from kindergarten. You waited for the bell to ring under the yellow awning of an oak tree, holding his little sister’s hand. One bag of Cheerios for her to munch on, another to give the boy when he burst through the double doors, skipping, and carrying his latest piece of artwork.
On Friday, Elizabeth saw Grant in the hallway, and he nodded at her, friendly. She nodded back, navigating towards him. They would be walking in the same direction for approximately three minutes if she wanted to be on time to class, six if she was willing to be late.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Good, you?”
The chick crouches in the back of the nesting box, head bowed, facing the wooden panel furthest from the opening. Eyes closed, its tiny body sways amidst a cacophony of chirping. Siblings vie for top spot in the race to receive regurgitated seed, care of Mum and Dad. The budgerigar is three weeks old when I notice its parents ignoring it.
After my mom remarried, Dad bought an ice cream stand. It was the kind of place that was open only during the summer months and attracted the local crowd. I’m not sure what prompted him to buy this business. Maybe it was a tit for tat move? You know like, she got a new husband? I’ll get a new side hustle. He named it the Dairy Oasis, so who knows. Maybe it was more safe harbor than life well-lived revenge.
The week before you move away from home to attend graduate school, your father gets a tonsillectomy. You visit him with your mother and sisters at the hospital, and he speaks weakly with eyes dazed, his hand searching for your mother. She links their fingers together, and you avert your eyes. Public displays of affection always make you uncomfortable, and witnessing a vulnerability that you didn’t know was capable between them, especially from your father, unsettles you.
Ms. Finch always looked so clean, especially standing next to us. We were a rough bunch of kids. We combed our hair and washed our faces but were hardly as polished as Ms. Finch. On that hot September day, she wore a gray skirt with tiny silver buttons shaped like rose buds. I so wanted to touch one.
The moon has a face, but it is not one of a man.
The moon is a mujer, a woman.
I see her clearly for the first time in years of orbiting me. Two eyes. One nose. One pair of slightly parted lips. She rises quietly over the trees in Jay Ramirez’s yard and I perceive her.
My mother tossed me into Boy Scouts,
where I scouted the boys,
eager to rub sticks and start a fire.
I hated balls (sports balls),
but she wouldn’t give me Barbies.
Tilted back in her recliner, Rachel’s mother has the look of a petulant child. Feet up, arms crossed. Pouting.
Rachel closes her eyes, exhales long. She swallows her impatience, her anger, and reminds her mother what the doctor said. “If your blood sugar’s too high, you won’t heal.”
Her mother makes a face. “A couple pieces of candy aren’t going to kill me,” she spits.
only there is no guest, just you and this empty seat where your wife should have been and a pink-haired woman bunched into the window seat, eyes shut, lips moving as the jet’s engines rumble and thrum. Your wife would have small-talked her, showed her the funny picture of your son and the grandkids—tongues out, eyes crossed—
My work delves into the themes of impermanence, decay, and the beauty that emerges from deterioration. I hope to capture moments of transition, where familiar forms are altered through spontaneous and unpredictable processes of chemical disruption and physical manipulation. Polaroids, known for their instantaneity and clarity, are subjected to forces that warp, dissolve, and transform the images.
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