creative prose
Most Recent
To Those of You Who are Bold Enough to Take on the Self-Aggrandizing Title, “Writer”
Welcome to the Wild and Bewildering you are about to Embark on. This is a Path not for the faint of Heart or weak of Mind. It is riddled with the Proverbial Bodies of our Talentless Ancestors, those whom may have Tried and Failed miserably. Don’t listen to Anyone who...
Who is Zooming Who? Rituals of Shame in the White Academic Institution
An elite white academic institution in California has convened a virtual workshop on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for a cohort of humanities faculty. The DEI workshop is facilitated by a consulting firm. Colleagues CS and Etambuyu are faculty and long-time...
You Stinker
There were plenty of kids we made fun of in high school — the girl with the face tattoo; the foreign exchange student from Wales; Male Leslie — but Anna was different. Nothing ever fazed her. In fact, it seemed like she enjoyed when people pulled on her braids as they...
Excerpt of HOW I PLAYED MY CARDS
The front yard of the house we bought in Lebanon, Illinois, needed a lot of work. The driveway wasn’t quite level. Every weekend for a month, Ed dug into the earth, replacing freshly turned over soil with gravel. He planted a maple sapling in the front yard, too. At...
A Personal Transcript from the Samuel Oschin Planetarium Showing: OCEANS OF GRAVITY
content warning: childhood sexual abuseSpace is a concept that most can never understand; Autumn and I, we know it well.We tussled with it floating upon the endless sea, taken by darkness that stripped all hope. We converged with it arriving upon these shores, the...
The Unseen Nature of Learning
It’s always difficult to see them when I log on to teach class. Crammed into a small room with one laptop, two of the five students are off-screen.Because I am unable to see all of them, I say each student’s name aloud to ensure they are present, to hear their voices....
Growing Pains
Mom and Dad knocked briefly and rushed into my room. Half-asleep, I dug one foot, then the other, into the carpet. It was a bit too early to wake up for school, so I could only wonder why they had dragged me out of bed, or why they were so excited. It was my eleventh...
Some Sort of Hostage Situation
Like most Tuesdays, we spend the night out at our favorite Divisadero Street dive bar, swapping dirty stories for fun over $3 sake bombs. But this time I take it a bit too far and let slip some facts about me that you don’t really like so much. You do a good job...
The Stone
2021At the top of the hill whose slope is bisected by the Living Stone, there lies a ruined castle that once belonged to a lineage of dukes. Today it serves as a wedding venue. The hill rolls out and down into a broad valley, and between its highest and lowest points,...
Failure of Trees
“The failure of trees is inherently unpredictable.” — Caswell Memorial State ParkIt’s strange to have the idea on the boat where there are no books, no letters — only water and the different kinds of light in it. I am thirsty when I start wondering if that’s what...
Skin
The sun hangs low in the sky like an overripe orange. You wish for a moment that you could reach up and pluck it, sink your teeth into it so you could taste something sweet, empty your mouth of the blood and dirt that has made a home there.You used to bite your lip...
Learning to Drink Black Coffee in Arkansas
I grew up in a house near the Randal Tyson Recreational Complex in Springdale, Arkansas. For sixth and seventh grade, I went to Helen Tyson Middle School, just down the road from Don Tyson Parkway, which would take you to the corporate headquarters of the...