Hoax
When I was 40, I met my biological father for the first time. It was only five years earlier that I learned he existed, or that I was even missing a dad. I had had several fathers already: the estranged, supposed biological father, and my “real” dad, the one who had married my mom and…
Read MoreCastration Attempts as a Mormon Youth
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Read MoreBenny’s Bed
The last week of school, Benny dies. I have to act like everything’s normal. I come home with Cem and help with his homework. I stay up late with my mom till she falls asleep watching Turkish soap operas, curled up against the couch with her arms crossed as I lay a blanket over her.…
Read MoreSabbath
In the beginning man he created themIn the beginning woman he created them This was the way God thought at that time something hard, something soft: balanceIt was the beginning of balance And the garden was goodThere was what to eat and they took and theytookuntil the dreams came The first murder hadn’t happened yet,nothing…
Read MoreHabitat
Jackson traced it back to a specific moment. All of it—the disturbance of migratory patterns, the quietness of death, nature’s persistence from the inside out. He traced it back to a bonfire, Fairbanks, Alaska. To twelve drunk men and women that he hardly knew, huddled in a circle. It had warmed to ten beautiful degrees…
Read MoreCooking Lessons
Three foreigners, teachers of English at the local university, all fair, blue-eyed, light-haired, walk to a small restaurant in a small corner of China called Anyang. The sun sinks behind a gauzy, polluted curtain. It’s dinner time and everyone is out: bicycles, cars, groups walking, stopping to browse, or eat in one of the matchbox-sized…
Read MoreSummoning Dylan
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Read MoreMixed Media on Paper, 2014
The Baths
Everything about these baths is naked:the flayed stone, the unfinished spigots,the underwater bodies swaying like pale kelpwith its fronds and bladders.Beyond the cliff’s edge, the sea’sslick chorion surface heaves, summoning meas though I could slide out of my skinand through one of its whorlslike a wet seal pup. I soak in this tub, a fleshy…
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