family

1. “I don’t know if things happen for a reason,” my dad says in a low aside to my boyfriend in the pizza parlor in Grand Forks, North Dakota. “I…

Image Credit: B Hayward   Not long after we moved in together, my girlfriend and I created a budget to monitor our living expenses. We both freelance, so it’s a…

The pig, Swine, an animal unfit for consumption by many, deemed unclean. An animal that can be utilized head to tail—as with the fine art of charcuterie. To take a…

The Day   When we pulled in the campground owner was waiting for us in a pick-up truck that had seen better days. We’d called early asking for firewood. Rolling…

1 I first learned the term “Ignorance is bliss” from my mom. She told me about how her brother Vincent was hyper, constantly fidgeting. And he was always smiling. Their…

I didn’t see the physical mess: I smelled it. A noxious odor—a potion of blood and paint fit for the three witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Earlier that day, my brother…

Children of God by Lars Petter Sveen (Trans. by Guy Puzey) Graywolf Press, 2018 256 pages / Graywolf   In an essay for BBC Radio 3 entitled “Christmas Father,” the Norwegian writer…

Woman, Running Late, In a Dress by Dallas Woodburn Yellow Flag Press, 2018 178 pages / Yellow Flag   It’s confounding to have the ghost of your seven year old sister haunt…

I was a child of the 1990’s, but you wouldn’t know it by the way my family ate. While most of my friends were having canned ravioli and tie-dye yogurts,…

“Where’re you going?” Mom called sharply from the kitchen. “Aren’t you going to help me?” I stopped, one foot on the stairs. My eyes were bleary, my temper suddenly short.…

My mother taught me how to cook pasta al dente, fry eggplant to a perfect crisp, and assemble a crockpot meal practically with one hand. My father, on the other…

In my grandmother’s house, we find coffee and chicory on the kitchen counter, her half-consumed box of oats, her glasses on her bureau, her watch still ticking on her bedside…

Image Credit: Edwin Carmona    “Every dictatorship, whether of man or party, leads to the two forms that schizophrenia loves most: the monologue and the mausoleum.” —Octavio Paz   Joe…

For Dad     “Because science shows us how to better understand the world, but it also reveals to us just how vast is the extent of what is still…