I needed to be a part of something—anything, a neighborhood—a community, glued together like dark red nail polish dripped dried on white bathroom tile, a messy blob of circumstance reborn.
The Neighbors
Category: Creative Nonfiction
The Humid Temptations
My father closed his word, laid down the red crayon he used to mark pages, perhaps from Leviticus, For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: you shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
The Pandemic Pages (Excerpt)
I am doing the dishes for the millionth time. And the word weary keeps repeating in my head. It catches itself on a lyric.
ORAL HISTORY OF THE GODS: So what: on the moral virtues of drinking and talking all night
Two Jewish men stay up all night drinking and debating the existence of God. At the end of the night, they come to a conclusion: God cannot possibly exist. They tumble out into the early morning air, satisfied with their conclusion.
Star of David
Every year, my father climbed to the roof in late fall to install his homemade star of David on the top of our house.
How To Quilt Memories: Instructions For My Mother
Step 1: Cut as many large sections as you can from my six nursing school uniforms, blue-and-white seersucker dresses with white cotton aprons buttoned to the waistband.
ORAL HISTORY OF THE GODS: An interlude on the unbearable cynicism of institutions
And perhaps we create the sacred not by putting our trust in the institutions that are supposed to guard it, but by demanding that these institutions relentlessly revise themselves toward the sacred.
When It’s Time to Leave: Conversation 4
If you’re not-Mormon, it’s impossible not to be aware of being not-Mormon. You learn about the Mormons, in order to be not-Mormon, and in order to not be tempted into being married to a Mormon.
Ain’t No Man
I see men as trees, walking. If men were trees, if our cities were forests, our towns dense groves, what kind of world would we then make?
Psaltery & Lyre 