Here I am tonight on the Mexican side of town full now with Hondurans and Salvadorans, shabby streets and houses bursting with Latin American men who for some reason, sometimes, notice me.… more
Here I am tonight on the Mexican side of town full now with Hondurans and Salvadorans, shabby streets and houses bursting with Latin American men who for some reason, sometimes, notice me.… more
My turn in line, and how easy to now imagine my mother, a child just like me, in a lunch line at school, thinking a paper lunch card made them special, unaware it was for all the wrong reasons, unaware of what it said of them now and what it threatened to say for their future.… more
I’d sit on his lap in a well-worn armchair while he watched TV and smoked his cigars, letting me take a drag or two. It was in these moments I fell in love with many things: the scent of tobacco on a man’s shirt, the stubble from his chin on my forehead, and the crack of the bat.… more
I have fucked my life up and now I’m unemployed, smothering in the high August air of Greensboro, North Carolina. The nearest soul I know is sixty-seven miles away, but they rip ass on the highway here, I can make it under an hour.… more
I woke up sobbing because God, in the form of my girlfriend, helped rest the pistol in my mouth and the last thing I heard was his laugh echoed over hers when she helped pull the trigger.… more
I am no longer a child and know these efforts won’t atone for the sins of a father, transform a stranger into a mother, yet I keep going as if at some point I will be rewarded, handed whatever it is I seem to want from one of my almost-mothers.… more
It’s not always clear what a hole is for.… more
I say we can burn some incense, scatter something on water, bang a drum, make an incantation, what in your opinion will be an act that is life affirming? You say I think there’s a Harley-Davidson dealership around here.… more
Red is alarm, a fire, emergency, impending disaster. Red is blood, a jagged wound, the color of searing pain. Red is fury, volatility, a tantrum, the angry man who says you’re not enough or maybe you’re too much.… more
I used to think toughness was armor. Now I think it’s trust—running straight at the world believing it might love you back.… more