“Mijo. Venga. Ayúdeme.” I rouse myself out of bed at two in the morning. “Mijo, lléveme a El Salto,” he tells me as I enter his bedroom. I sit by his bed, reach over the railing, release his grip.…
Pac got shot up in ’96, this time on a famous strip in Las Vegas. In three days he’d rise again like Jesus, a Lazarus in the Bible, outside of his hometown claiming victory over Hades. He’d be back…
Somehow, here—before the picnic ramadas and megaplayground and volley and basketball courts near a man-made lake with knolls bristled with grass—stood, for ninety-nine years, a residential boarding school named Phoenix Indian School. But no more. This acreage is now…
Spring 2025 When did Black women get so impatient with our own selves? Is what I think alongside sitting underneath a hooded hair dryer for thirty minutes, the plastic cap bubbling a brewing smell of onion juice, garlic, and…
My mother’s been dead since 1982, two thirds of my life. Today, I am perched on a stool at a table in the Comics Room at the University of Wisconsin–Madison trying to remember what she looked like so I…
Elvis Presley’s warbling on the overhead speakers as Mom and I browse a warm, wood-splashed Barnes & Noble. She wants to buy a puzzle for my nephew in Florida. She turns to me. “Oh god, the day Elvis died?…
I. Rain gush-pummels our car. Whippet wipers slash frantically at the whitecaps. Off to Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, to watch our daughter, Lily’s, volleyball tournament. It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving, and our son, Hudson, is meeting us there from Pittsburgh. …
Peterborough, New Hampshire We get lost and it’s my fault. I think I know a shortcut. Mary knows only the long way around. I have an appointment for a man to look into my mouth and tell me my…
A stowaway made the long trip to the United States with my mother, father, and me. Unbidden and unticketed, tucked into the pocket of a gray overcoat, chilled by early fall’s ocean breezes, pushed back by hope—grief nevertheless made…
They are tearing down Women’s Hospital, where I gave birth to my youngest two, a girl against the flame-bright maples of November, a boy in June’s fat sweat. For years, the hospital stands silent, as we drive to the…
