He sang Gershwin as we strolled down Montreal sidewalks, past budding trees confined to boulevard boxes, where dogs peed against them,...

CW: Implied violence I lean out from the wooden porch railing. Dry flakes of white lead paint chip off and mix with the sweat under my...

Have you ever watched the sunset at cloud level? Watched it dip below the cloudline while you were right there with it, right there in...

We are standing next to the car, and the sky is an open wound, misty and oozing, shades of pink beginning to interrupt the bruised gray....

He grew up in Poland, a Catholic childhood with a proclivity for stoicism; pious, ascetic, the gift of intellect and his rock-hard work...

Dennis knocks on my door before 8 a.m. It’s a relief to see him. Like it is when Doug’s cold nose greets me in the morning. My older...

Central Park Right below the Central Park Reservoir on a hot summer night, and the sex wasn’t even that great. We are dressed in our...

Here’s a picture of me, my parents, and my brother Chris, back in 1982. They are dressed nicely, perhaps for church or some event. I am...

My 27-year-old mother is forever blasting down the bubbling asphalt of late-summer Mississippi in a sky-blue 1978 Mercury Cougar—so wide...

Stranger in the City (Abijan, Ivory Coast, 1998) I was unable not to take a second look when I saw them walk through the hotel lobby to...

Lana lit my hair on fire a couple weeks ago trying to light a stogie, so she crinkles her arm when we embrace to avoid a repeat singe....

A word from the author: As a trauma therapist I was invited to Harlem Hospital to talk to the ER staff, ambulance crews, and doctors and...

I think of the night I decided I couldn’t wait to not be thirteen anymore. It wasn’t a far drive; I only lived a few blocks up the...

From the sidewalk, my son and I watched the car in the opposite lane slow and execute a three-point turn, evoking a distant memory of...

Harris was a bare patch in the middle of bigger patch of prairie, but folks were proud of being respectable, hard-working Christians....

In the first place, I resented everyone and his neighbor commenting on or even seeming to concern himself with my soul or lack of one....

I stuff the happy yellow silken blooms into my pocket, my bunny rabbit’s favorite treat. I let them grow wild in my yard and harvest them...

CW: violence I spent a year wanting to kill a preacher. Inside the mother’s body, a child began to grow. I imagined medieval...

ACT I The preamble. INT. ME - ALWAYS - UP UNTIL NOW I don’t call my mother’s father ’grandpa’. In English or Cantonese, it is a title...

Rippling refers to the fact that each of us creates—often without our conscious intent or knowledge—concentric circles of influence that...