Saturn Devouring His Son, McCulloch County, Texas, 1982

He watched his father for direction, advice. He tried to bring the rifle up to his shoulder as slowly, as his father did. He struggled but did not want to disappoint.

Nur Jahan Bent over Backwards in Time

When a fourteen-year-old girl, in a haphazard way, writes the names of nineteen wives of Jehangir, a Mughal emperor of India in the sixteenth century, on the mud floor of her cottage with a wooden stick.

Excerpt from Taoism

“Let reality be reality.”* 

In period 3 World Religions Father Riley orders you to stand. He asks if you’ve misplaced your hairbrush. He says you look like a horse. Everyone laughs.

Arrivals

She lands at the airport, the wheels juddering beneath the plane’s frame, her hands pressed to the seat back in front.

Back Here in My Dream, Over and Over Again

Memory tells me where to go, even though my mind tells me it’s my first time here. The familiar concrete steps, the choppy sidewalk, the clear ocean teeming with octopus.

Cherry Creek Reservoir

As if the virus weren’t enough, the middle-aged couple was informed upon arriving at the Cherry Creek Reservoir during their trip to Denver that blue-green algae was present, and swimming would not be allowed.

Assassination

Here’s a fun fact. The Chinese believe the eyeballs of fish to be delicacies, and to be offered one when there are only two! in the whole fish! is considered a great honor.

Excerpt from Cheat

Julio and his mother had spent much of his childhood watching shows that, in hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have been watching. Blind Date and Jerry Springer. Cops. Cheaters.

Nature Sightings Outside My Window

These sightings always start the same. / A little bird chases a big bird / Away from her nest, from her children, / From her husband while he sleeps? / Do birds have husbands? Maybe.

Turtle

Our task is to find food in our nature. My older brother and I are assigned to the same tent—because of my secret. I collect berries, but my brother wants meat.

Excerpt from The Governor

It’s a Monday afternoon, and one of my lovers is telling me that he doesn’t find me as sexy as he used to.

You Always Ask Me How I Write

“Do you write at home?” you ask. “Or outside?”

“Alone,” I answer. “I can’t write with people around me. Especially people I know. It feels like they can hear my thoughts.”

Excerpt from Water as Villain Origin Story

Would you believe they blamed the river? For its honesty, the way it forages for anything’s likeness. Snips each season’s foliage from the trees, suspends the leaves in its wet resin.

The Dog Walker

clips a schnauzer to each leash: the hard puller on the right, the fighter on the left. They start their walk slowly, but the fighter, the smaller one, immediately lunges at his own reflection in the window at Duane Reade.

Excerpt from How High We Go in the Dark

It’s strange how a graveyard the size of a planet could instill hope in us all, help us to understand that our ship was more than a ship and whatever we found would be home not only because of oxygen and water and soil chemistry, but because of us.

Resume (Draft)

Objective: To secure a challenging and rewarding position in management of sinners’ souls.

Moon And Mantle

Silt slit—so along the crevice, detritus and echoed lullabies entered and emerged upon river mouths as such tongues lingered among melodic motions up against eroded banks of stalagmitic earth.

Within Easy Reach of the Rocky Mountains

She can’t help but think of you—imagining the tone of your voice, the shape of your mouth when you say her name.