My wife always thought that someday I’d be a big success. She talked about it since we got married, enthusiastically in the beginning, particularly when she became pregnant with our first daughter, … [Read more...]
Richard’s Coat: Remembering Richard Irwin
Richard’s Coat… went into the cardboard box with all the other things for the thrift store: an orange radio with a broken antenna, a vintage purse that was only in fashion in San Francisco’s … [Read more...]
Aztec Summer
And after I got laid off from my teaching job in Michigan, I moved out to Portland and lived on unemployment and savings for almost two years, running my credit union accounts almost down to zero … [Read more...]
a toast to ti-jean in a liverpool gloom saloon
12 March 2018 It is said that a woman haunts, she sees everything. An observer, a writer, a siren of dreams. In my heart and mind, I am always searching for slivers of paradise while being silently … [Read more...]
The Muse Cuts: On Mental Health and Writing
My university lies at the center of a small farming town. It is a splotch of academia in the midst of many hay fields, and this year it has eleven thousand students. I’m here to learn creative … [Read more...]
Notes on the Sacred Art of Dog Walking
I read and reviewed Jim Harrison’s final collection of poetry, Dead Man’s Float, for the Missoula Independent in January of 2016. One of the first poems to strike me deeply is called “Notes on the … [Read more...]
(Part VI) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir
This is the final excerpt and contains chapters 11-Denouement. Here are all of the installments: Part I · Part II · Part III · Part IV · Part V · Part … [Read more...]
Faleeha Hassan: My Life as a Refugee
Once my name appeared on a death list published in a number of newspapers and on some websites, I decided to flee Iraq and went first to the Turkish city of Eskişehir—on the advice of an Iraqi friend … [Read more...]
Eight Hours
A man, who was leaving, asked me to write a story. He said he was going on an errand – a meeting with his accountant, a lunch with his cable guy, a high tea with a small herd of white rhinos – I … [Read more...]
(Part V) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir
This excerpt contains chapters 8-10. Here are all of the installments: Part I · Part II · Part III · Part IV · Part V · Part VI 8. Homeless … [Read more...]
How to Die Like You Meant It
“I don’t have long to live, and this is what heaven looks like,” I thought as I lay on my back, my breath freezing to my beard in the minus 3 temperature, the hard, dirty snow between the boxcars … [Read more...]
Animals, Seven Days Old
I. I start at the cheek, the slope slowing into the area where eyes rest. The dip of the chin, gray’s muted hue, smog on jaw. The ear, hair … [Read more...]
(Part IV) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir
This excerpt contains chapter 7, in which Alison spends time at the Kerouac School in Boulder, then continues her adventures in Rome. Here are all of the installments: Part I · Part II … [Read more...]
(Part III) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir
This excerpt contains chapters 5 and 6, which detail Alison's experiences at the Kerouac School in the early 1980s and her later homelessness at Columbia University. Here are all of the … [Read more...]
Dearly Beloved, Part II: Growing up in Bohemian 1950s San Francisco
You can read Part I of Nanette's memoir of growing up in 1950s San Francisco here. I begin to make a habit of snuggling down behind the Shoji screen with a "Minka." I hold my breath … [Read more...]
White Jesus – A reflection on summer camp and Charlottesville
Growing up in Kansas, from about 9 to 12 years old, I went to Christian summer camp down the highway in rural Missouri. I loved it there. We swam in creeks and caught crawfish. I played soccer and … [Read more...]
Panic Drapes the Look of the World: Literary Treatment for Anxiety in an Uncertain Age
1. June, 2016: I was having a panic attack while I walked the dog after dinner. Children rode skateboards and scooters in that last yellowed hour before bedtime. I felt unreal to myself, and the … [Read more...]
Edward Albee Speaks
I heard that Edward Albee was giving a workshop at the Omega Institute. I attempted to sneak in using my press credentials, but Omega politely explained that "all the slots are filled." So I … [Read more...]
(Part II) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir
This excerpt contains the middle of Chapter 2 through the beginning of Chapter 5, starting with childhood and going up to Alison's arrival in the early 1980s at the Kerouac School. Here are all … [Read more...]
(Part I) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir
This is the first excerpt of six. Here are all of the installments: Part I · Part II · Part III · Part IV · Part V · Part VI (Part I) The School(girl) of … [Read more...]
Spring in Cascadia
Ten days in the northwestern bit of the USA — a sort of slow-paced quick visit to a part of the world I've wanted to see for so long. On the way, I managed to spend five days with my friends Tim … [Read more...]
Plain Sight
Behind a scarred metal door, painted red and inset with two locks that opened to keys in shapes I never saw in the States, including one that looked like the Philips head screwdriver on my old swiss … [Read more...]
The Seed
The sun beat down on my parents’ black Olds as they drove south to their honeymoon in Florida. It was 1937. My father could easily have afforded a new car which cost $540 then. He made plenty of money … [Read more...]
Being There – Michelle Bracken
Summer, 2004 We had never gone away together, never taken a vacation. My mother had always been too busy cleaning houses, changing diapers, and dating worthless men. But she made time, one summer, … [Read more...]
Subterranean Boy
There was a time that I fell in love once: with life, slowly with myself, and with a beautiful boy who completely turned my world upside down. A beauteous man child who taught me about life and love … [Read more...]
All Night You Dream of Ice and In the Morning Wake to a Skiff of Snow
After all these weeks of rain and gray, the sky a fitted sheet on the too bulky mattress of mass, last night there were white blossoms in the trees and snow on the earth and your hair grew long and … [Read more...]
The Only Man in the World
DADIO SPLIT FOR MOLOKA’I every weekend to supervise his Puko’o project. He was certain his pick-and-shovel laborers and heavy equipment operators were slacking off. I took turns with Troy, my big … [Read more...]
Under His Roof
At 19, just out from under my father’s roof, I was in an antique shop, a secondhand shop really, eyeing a copper teakettle. “Sit!” the owner said sharply. I sat. Then I saw a large dog, a … [Read more...]
Marshmallow Forest
Mud hardens on my combat boots as I step behind my sister through the sickle of woods dividing her property from her neighbors. The son of the previous owners, born intellectually disabled and fond of … [Read more...]
Dearly Beloved, Part I: Growing up in 1950s San Francisco
In San Francisco, a handsome old Lutheran Church is for sale. My "Beat Generation", progressive, bohemian, intellectual, Jewish, left-leaning, scholarly, non-conformist, art professor parents, Leonard … [Read more...]
Sleevelessness: Growing Up in Midcentury San Francisco by Nanette Jordan
My mom’s job is to sit on a stool in our basement. Thatʼs where her art studio is. She has a drawing table there that has a square leaned-up top and ink stains all around the edges. When she’s not … [Read more...]
On Painting On
“Why are the paintings going away?” Mommy explains: ”Your dad is having a very important one-man show at a big fancy gallery across from The San Francisco Opera House. We're going to get all … [Read more...]
El Condor Pasa
All my life I’ve been surrounded by paintings of cowboys. Longer still, I’ve been surrounded by people who wanted to be cowboys. Sometimes I count the paintings, the cowboys. There’s my grandparents’ … [Read more...]
From Motown to Mowtown
An obsession with polished aspirational black music finally carried me to Detroit. I had come to rediscover the heartbreak of first love and unearth a few last Okeh "cover ups". Poking my nose against … [Read more...]
The Poetry of Walking
“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the … [Read more...]
With Crooked Legs of Hackberry
At 21, I traveled through India for six months. My world-view had been scrambled, and writing about my travels helped me unscramble it. I had never seen people starving on the streets, their limp … [Read more...]
Irishry
When I moved to San Pedro one of the welcome signs was learning that an established family of iron workers with my name lived here. The rumor was that one of its younger members hung at Walker's Café … [Read more...]
This High
My first attempt at rolling a joint was rather pathetic. It looked more like a small turd covered in paper than something to be smoked. And not knowing to remove the twigs and seeds — of which it had … [Read more...]
London 1966: I.T., the Camel, and a Song Named Me
The camel’s unexpected appearance saved me. The raggedy texture of his fur, his massiveness, and his breath were all undeniably real, no matter how bizarre the setting and cast of characters. Snaking … [Read more...]
Becoming Jill Kerouac
It all started with the word. Not THAT word. But a word — or a string of words, rather — that struck me: There are no Jack Kerouacs or Holden Caulfields for girls. Literary girls don’t take … [Read more...]
