There are myriad ways to kill a chicken, but by this point, I would have put the chicken in the car by a lake and released the parking brake.
A Glimpse of Abundance
For two months that summer, like Alice in Wonderland, I stepped out of one life and into another.
Checkmate
In Soviet Ukraine, where chess mattered, Igor Borisovich’s difficult personality was forgiven as a side effect of his chess master genius.
Labyrinths
My mother speaks for me. I nod along as she recounts the twisted history of my illness, too weak to correct her when she trips over a detail.
Hidden Inheritance
I. Dad, in his white undershirt and gym shorts, asked to speak with me one night. I didn’t think much of this; he often wished me goodnight with an “I love you” and a “sweet dreams” sprinkled in for good…
Buried Dishes
We’d been dating for only a short month and already cohabitating on Seneca Street in Tucson, when Leslie, my future wife, invited me to her family’s home, 120 miles north in Tempe, to meet her parents and to subject me…
“My Heart Will Always Be With You”
In the old Korea image, the heart appeared raised, not engraved. Plump, like a real heart.
Ruminations on David Foster Wallace’s letters to Richard Elman
Every love story is a ghost story in the sense that the beloved often lingers, haunts, and possesses the mind of the lover.
Chimera
My son is a year-old as I write this, and he’s slept through the night twice. Both times I’ve woken in panic, sure this meant something was terribly wrong.
Race and Appeasement
I dropped my ponytail and gave her my full attention as she breathed out, “He’s the leader of the fucking Klu Klux Klan, Emalee.”
My Brother’s Peace Keeper
My brother has never been my enemy. But I worry about what he could be driven to do under the pretenses of defending what he loves.
North
Soon after re-entering their natal streams, the salmon’s kidneys fail. Having come to maturity in the ocean, they can no longer ingest freshwater.