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Owosso

December 10, 2019
I am not open to ghosts. This is what I said to anyone who started to relate an encounter they had. I said the words hoping all discussion of ghosts would cease. I was careful not to say I don’t believe in ghosts, or to in any way diminish the speaker’s relationship with the paranormal....

Derrick Wore His Pants Too High

May 28, 2019
Derrick Stegan, developmentally disabled, thin as a coilspring on a box mattress, wore his pants too high, which made him look like a garden hose. Spring mornings after the rains he came swinging along in his cheap tennis shoes, plowing through puddles, his pants pulled so high the waist touched his armpits. Donnie Joe, standing...

The Report

December 20, 2018
We begin and end our days with a story. At the pediatric unit where I have worked the last four years, we report in the morning, as the orange sun creeps into the corners of fluorescent lit hallways, and at night, as helicopters take off from the roof into city skies streaked with magenta and...

First Kiss

April 18, 2018
When I was thirteen, and still trusting that Lubbock, Texas could be the whole of the world, I kissed a boy from church named Adam. Our church upheld God’s word as literal, but that’s not why the kiss came to be my first sin. Adam was sixteen, the son of a cotton farmer, and for...

Nobody Loves the Fat Man

April 18, 2018
The first time I was called a fat fuck by someone I loved I was staying at a five star Spanish hotel, a Parador, which had once been a nunnery or a castle; but now, this place was a five-star hotel offering five star gastronomic experiences at a restaurant just off of the lobby. The...

The Egg Man

December 12, 2017
“A neat example of a psychical system shut off from the stimuli of the external world, and able to satisfy even its nutritional requirements autistically . . . is afforded by a bird’s egg with its food supply enclosed in its shell.” — Freud, “Formulation on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” I had been...

Lebenslauf

December 12, 2017
I often imagined the birth would be similar to births I had already witnessed: the births of my younger brother and of animals on the farm where I grew up. I imagined it would be nighttime and I would lie down on my side and calmly breathe the baby out, as my mother had, or...

Parricide Blues

November 30, 2017
On the tracks of the Frisco Railroad, Mark Gwyn in a borrowed pickup, March of ’74. He’s my father and he’s helping a newlywed couple move across Tulsa when his engine dies and the truck begins to coast. They roll toward the train tracks and the front tires pop the first rail, pop over the...

Reckless

November 30, 2017
Loewock, in the Northwest Celebes, lay on a narrow shelf along the coast, its mountains soaring almost straight from the sea. The S.S. Jacob pulled out at 10 AM and with it went the last direct communication of what we call a civilized world. A packet of letters to Muckie, another to Mandy. He stood...

Notes from a Congregant

November 28, 2017
On September 21, 2012, Texas executed Rodney Wayne Harris, a car wash employee who killed six co-workers after being fired for exposing himself to female customers. If we can put aside whatever debate might ensue about capitol punishment, the violent nature of Mr. Harris’ crimes, the fact that prosecutors were able to remove all potential...

Orphan Girl

November 7, 2017
The sky is coated with scurf the color of tin. Bands of haze hang at the fringe of the valley giving the impression that the mountains have receded into memory. The air is thick and full of grit. A mouthful chokes me. A good storm would clear it but the days are still and quiet...

Catch and Release

November 2, 2017
“It’s a bad catch,” you say. You are ten, thin and tall, all angles and sharp bones. The lure you’ve been using has three hooks, and one is caught in the bass’ gills. You hold the fish in your hands, then sit on your haunches. You know you have only a minute or so before...