I started boxing because of writing. I was working on a novel about young queer women being angry and boxing their way out of their small town. I needed terminology, so I went to a boxing training class. I…
On the Big Island of Hawai‘i, Honokaa is the town tourists drive through to get to Waipi‘o Valley. At the top of the valley is a scenic overlook, which provides an unobstructed view to the black sand beach, river,…
A woman in a spruce-blue tracksuit enters my bedroom with a pickax and chips a hole in my wall. She collects smooth, fist-sized rubies from between the studs and places them in a music box, ribboned with dark grain,…
There are mornings we just manage it. We rise in the weak gray light and take our coffee with our notebooks open. A sliver of meditative silence. Are you writing about me? you ask. No, I lie. Are you…
Inspired by Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino—a story of my life Perhaps the farmland becomes industrial yards with barbed wire fences, and then the barbed wire fences become concrete retaining walls covered in graffiti, and you are there.…
BOARDING The thing about los Hondureños, es que como dice mi abuela, hablan hasta por los codos. They talk even out of their elbows. I will never get through a Tegus-bound plane ride without holding an…
She had become clumsy. She’d dropped the mug she loved, the green one the color of an aspen leaf, with its fluted skirt at the bottom. Either she’d knocked it to the floor, or worse, forgotten it was in…
Dear Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaughter, You probably don’t exist. I have never wanted to be a mother, and that will probably never change. Still, every time my tribe reaches out to those of us pursuing higher education, we are asked what we…
When you’re the point guard, you’ve got to be an extension of the coach on the court, & when you’re the girlfriend, you’ve got to be an extension of your abuser in public. Be careful not to embarrass either…
At first glance, a reader might miss the “i.” And see terror, from the root for “fear,” which many people feel these days. But the French word terroir comes from terra, land, and refers to the quality an environment…