I should have noticed when my wedding ring fell out of my pocket. I should have heard it strike and plink on the concrete floor in Big Willie’s dressing room behind the bar when I slung my jacket over…
Pretend I am your mother. Pretend you love me the way you did when you were small, and the world was big, and you could still feel, in some deep primordial way, that not so long ago, my body…
The Marine said his name was Dusty. She said hers was Laila, which was the name on the fake ID Kareena presented to the bouncer at the Wave Waikiki. If Crystal hadn’t led the way in a tube top…
Nearly two decades in this country and Ross would make it difficult for our mom to leave if she had to leave tomorrow. It’s where she found her favorite purse—plum purple, faux leather, a simple yet elegant tulip print.…
How to Wash the Dead Lenten, pansy, crocus, snowdrop Lewellen Hubbard was the corpse laid out before me. With my sponge soaked in sweet oil—Lenten and crocus blossom—I worked around the old scars on her arms: slash marks…
Dark birds fly from my eyes. Disappear. Where do the kittens come from? We don’t have a cat. Just kittens lumped together like a single entity. A litter. In a box a blanket a bag on the passenger seat?…
1. The day had been long and pleasant and I was dozing off in the early evening to the sound of leaves rustling. The wind would come around the side of the house and blow through the karaka trees…
The first step is realizing that you just can. Do you look at the other trendy queer people in your life, consider that they possess something so freeing and joyful and good, wish that perhaps you were as lucky…
Orode walked slowly on the wooden bridge. The water beneath him assaulted his senses. It smelt of tar and shit. He strode across the wooden planks. Reeds broke the surface of the murky river. Toads croaked loudly. Mosquitoes buzzed…
It’s an ugly thing to follow a woman along the street but this is what I did. She was a copy of Patti Smith during the early Mapplethorpe years, before Horses and Mineshaft and all the BDSM, when they…
