Essays – swamp pink

HORSEPOWER

Since that collision we call “conception”, I have always been a body inside a body. I was 14 the first time I had control of my carrier, the same age I discovered speed and direction. From inside the body, I controlled velocity. All that is to say, I learned how to drive. Before the engine:...

The Cost of Eggs

February 3, 2026

While the rest of the country loses their collective mind, you drive your chicken to the vet. The country is losing it because the cost of a dozen eggs—caged, conventional, the kind made cheap and cruel—is $7, marching toward $8. Bird flu is in several states. One person had died. Another is sick. The virus...

“Where Even the Sun Cannot
Find Its Way”^[1]
(Back Home, and Back Again)^[2]

January 27, 2026

A man has just robbed the bank[3] with a sawed-off shotgun,[4] crouching into a field of beans[5] and firing like mad[6] at the big police captain,[7] a man big enough to swallow a whale.[8] Bang—bang!Bang—bang—bang! Bang—bang![9] They shot back and forth and all around like purposeless nothings.[10] It was quieter than you would have expected.[11] A bird took a long step backward...

Route 128 to Mendocino

January 13, 2026

I’ve always thought of Route 128 in Northern California as a deep road. Unfolding as it does, through mountains and forests, rising and sinking in hairpin turns; it cuts through five different topographies in quick succession. One moment I’m going north then west, then east, and north again all within the same series of curves so wound and snaked through rock, hill, farmland, forest, and along river that my gut threatens to come undone after nearly every mile. The road can’t be ignored for one moment, which...

Postcards from a Volcano

January 13, 2026

And that night, a cold December in 1989, my father was not in the family room, his usual evening haunt. The outside’s ink had painted the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the scattered stars of neighbor’s lights glittered in the distance. Home from college, I was surprised to find myself alone in the house. Inside, at last, the family room was entirely mine, which meant the stereo was mine, and...

Soil, Sky

September 26, 2025

At first I was concerned about the soil. The inspector was a tall, bespectacled gentleman who resembled Stephen King with a nifty toolbelt. We followed him around the property like little reporter mice as he listed all the reasons the purchase would be a poor decision. The ground pitched toward the house such that water...

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GHOST AND GHOST AND GHOST

September 1, 2025

Ghost鬼[1] 人所归 All men return to ghostliness 为鬼in death, to don their macabre masks 从人，象鬼头 and in so unbalances their mortal figure. 鬼阴气贼害 All men in ghostliness harm the living 从厶 and are helpless in stopping their harming. 凡鬼之属 Ghosts hide in plain sight皆从鬼 in all ghostly things. *** I began translating these dictionary entries...

Birthverse

August 26, 2025

The day after my husband and I were supposed to have unprotected sex I sat alone by a dam in northern Maine, watching water surge through holes in a stone blockade, trying to imagine a baby ripping through my body. I thought that’s what I wanted—to transmute into a rabid river. But sitting there, outside...

American Water

August 26, 2025

Grajaú

Grajaú is a place that molds around the edges. Beneath the cracks in the wallpaper that no one ever bothers to fix, the walls turn black then ooze and the dirt gets kicked up from under the floorboards no matter how many times they are polished to a shine. Up on their wooden perches, the...

It Reminded Me of Something

It happened all the time / It didn’t happen at all. Either way, I wanted my mother to leave him. In a darkened room my art professor showed us slides of a house halved with a power saw. A slit of light shone through the exterior wall. It reminded me of something, I didn’t know...

McDonaldsing into the Future-Death

February 17, 2025

We call it Frink, and Frink it has been since he was able to demand “drink.” Frink it remains, though Frink is specific in a way only his family can know: a carbonated drink from McDonalds as dispensed by an accessible self-serve fountain (a pox on behind-the-counter tyrannical control!). Though cup sizes have escalated over...