Instructive Fable for the Daughter I Don’t Have
Walk into the woods and keep walking.
Colorado Review Summer 2016
Like New Year’s Eve, the onset of summer evokes plans and hopes, projects and promises. Often among them is the Summer Reading List. “This will be the summer,” we say, “when I read [insert major work you’re ashamed to admit you’ve never read].” But we might not necessarily start that list on June 1. We’ll […]
Colorado Review Fall/Winter 2015
Twelve years ago, with the support of Emily Hammond and Steven Schwartz, now Colorado Review’s fiction editor, we founded the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction as a way to honor the memory of Liza Nelligan, a dear friend and Colorado State University English Department alumna. Nelligan passed away in 2003, and the Prize seeks to […]
Namesake
Image by James Morley Listen to our podcast of this essay here. When I told my uncle Mason that I was gay, my father was back at the house, getting drunk. Earlier that evening I had come out to my parents, and my father didn’t take it well. I knew he wouldn’t, so I […]
From “Understory”
for my wife, nalani, and our 6-month-old daughter, kaikainali’i, hawai’i 2014 [we] take kaikainali’i to the pediatrician— outbreak of enterovirus D68 in new york— the nurse recites the vaccines and expiration dates— outbreak of chikungunya in the caribbean florida, tokelau— nalani holds kaikainali’i and sings a mele [we] learned during hapai class at kokua kalihi […]
Postcard
The Three Bridges on Ohio River between East Liverpool and Steubenville, Ohio Don’t worry, I promise, it won’t last long. They take one leg, then the other, and hold you on the table until their job is done. I wouldn’t lie, it hurts, the way they pry you open with their needles and crooks, […]
From River House
4. To know yourself better practice forgetting. Infinite circles fit in a line. When I see the phone I want to call my mother. I take a class to learn about an actor’s tool, the neutral mask. My favorite mirror though is Ahab Caught on the deck in the eyes of Starbuck, The moment […]
The Students Celebrate a Basketball Championship
These are the nights we burn couches. We carry them each like a paisley casket up from a basement lit year-round by strung-up Christmas lights and joints, out from a living room floored with carpet damp and soft as cheese; we curl our fingers under the frame, dodge florets of mold, lift the armrest nose […]
I Am Faithful
For a week now, in the apartment below mine, there’s been a tiny baby, brand new to the world. When it cries what come through the floorboards are the sounds of a catfight. Nothing human, not even close, but still the noise registers as child in need and pulls me from sleep by the hair. […]
Demiurge
As if a blueprint of author’s imagined garden could begin without the 28 leathern paws of 7 unassigned dogs halting, holding their howls at the edge. If you draw me a map I won’t find you. This poem is for the cartographer offering an alternate arcadia, I mean, a third arcana. I mean I believe […]