Nonfiction
Chase Scene
I’ve been marathoning classic horror movies with my teenage daughter. Talking with her about how we both came to love the genre set off a rumination on the impact of a childhood of horror.
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Fiction
Ten Thousand Crawling Children
Pregnancy is an infestation. A hidden invasion. An invisible operative sneaks inside you, planting a package of foreign genetic material and forcing you to replicate it trillions of times. Soon, your hostage cell floats down your fallopian tube to the womb to feed on the blood-bed of your uterine lining like a vicious little tick.
Fiction
Whatever Takes Us
I had two things in mind while writing this story: anti-trans legislature targeting trans, nonbinary, gender queer, and two-spirited people and all the moments I was bullied in the bathroom as a child for not looking girl enough. If this story can do anything beyond entertain, I hope it makes you speak up and act out against bigotry in all forms.
Fiction
The Curse of the Boto Boy
Even before my son was born, my village had made of me a black sheep. When I was young, I would slither between the grasp of the Elders and flitter into the jungle unabated. I would storm past the hills of fire ants to leap atop the trunks of fallen trees before catching ahold of a veritable vine like some kind of red-assed macaco.
Poetry
Awakening
Fairy tales approach revenge in such interesting ways—there is often a sense of catharsis and ordering the universe in these acts, especially since they tend to appear at the story’s conclusion. I wanted to write a horror poem with a sense of ambiguity about what happened so that the focus becomes the process of self-creation through revenge.
Fiction
The Cello in the Cell
Dear Andy: The day I was arrested, someone bought the winning Powerball lottery ticket that was worth 1.2 billion dollars. I remember dreaming what I would have done if I had won. You might not believe me, but I’m being serious here.
Fiction
Clown Town
I get up before dawn. Those pale-gray hours hold signs of unseen life: a trace of pungent spray, a flutter of wings, distant car doors slamming shut. Of course I attribute these to animals and early morning commuters. Sometimes I wonder if I’m wrong.
Fiction
The Sound of Children Screaming
You know the one about the Gun. The Gun goes where it wants to. On Thursday morning just after recess, the Gun will walk through the front doors of Thurman Elementary, and it won’t sign in at the front office or wear a visitor’s badge.
Poetry
A Trick of the Night’s Hunger
he poem was inspired by the unending struggle of the world and its continuous demand in our blood, where we must keep striving to stay afloat. In the last part of the poem, I demonstrated how at that point I was okay with much the world has to offer me, and was willing to not keep spending my blood.
Fiction
The Ascension of Magdalene
It felt a little like fucking. Reminded Magdalene of the first time she’d ever let a boy get a hand up her skirt, long before Ben but he didn’t know that, she wore white on her wedding day. Couldn’t even remember his name, that boy, just that he’d died in The War.
