Things UnspokenEverything that moves makes a sound, my mother told me once. It was her response to a firestorm of test-cases, me running around our house pointing and saying, How about that? How about that?
Everything, she said. Of course there are the obvious examples: feet stomping, drawers shutting, vibrations I can feel. But with other things — the ceiling fan, the flicking of switches and igniting of bulbs — I’m not so sure. Read it at Massachusetts Review > |
ConversionIt’s Revival Day at Newbirth Evangelical, and I think I’ve got that post-traumatic thing soldiers get, like we learned about in school. It’s been a month, but after what happened at the last one, just seeing the word Revival creeps me out. I can feel my heart beating in my neck, and I’m not doing anything, just sitting. I can tell from the angle of the sun—the way it seems hell-bent on scorching a hole through my left pant leg—that the service is already running overtime.
Read it at Guernica > |
Notes on a War-Torn Childhood (With an Introduction by Justin Taylor)I’m ten the night my house explodes. The sound isn’t a sound, just a vibration so strong it rattles my chest. I come-to face down on the floor, impossibly unharmed, and pull myself on my elbows across the carpet and into the hallway. A section of the house—the part where my parents’ bedroom is supposed to be—is missing. I run. In the street, the pavement is warped from the treads of tanks that have plowed through the neighborhood. I spot a trench, jump down, and follow its rutted path toward the city center. Read it on Electric Literature>
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First World Problems: Rethinking the Plight of the War CorrespondentI first met Janine di Giovanni in the bathroom of the Brooklyn Brewery one sticky night in June, though she had been haunting me for weeks. Perhaps "meeting" is the wrong word, because we did not speak, but I had followed her into the bathroom with every intention of speaking to her. Then, upon realizing our encounter could only be perceived as stalkeresque, I washed my hands and went to wait in line at the book table like a normal person. Read it on LARB>
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Ploughshares: Writing LessonsThere comes a time in all writing courses when a professor must call in the big guns, and raze a path on which our students can travel toward their writerly epiphanies. This summer, the time came when my students handed in drafts of their dramatic scenework, an assemblage of well-meaning but painfully direct dialogues...
...To combat [the problem], I brought in the biggest guns I knew—Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei, at their finest in My Cousin Vinny. Read it on Ploughshares > |
On Late-Stage Pediatric CardiomyopathyShould you find yourself coming-to while being wheeled out of your high school calculus class, it is best not to open your eyes. Feign unconsciousness for a few more seconds, until the EMTs have turned the corner out into the hallway. You will get that feeling, not pain but pressure, as if you are in some reverse barometric chamber and the air is breathing on you. Do not make eye contact with your peers in this state; someone perceptive might see your future flickering across your dilated pupils. Read at the minnesota review>
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"Dreaming of Three Scrambled Eggs": Selected Translations"At Dusk" by Izet Sarajlić
On the soccer pitch a boy strums his guitar; overhead a grenade flies in from Poljina. Read it on Circumference > |
I'm Deaf and I'm Totally Cool With it, ThanksI like being deaf. I love the feeling of quiet and comfort I have even while living amid the noise and crowds of New York City. I love sign language, the culture that surrounds it, and the tight-knit feeling of acceptance I’ve experienced in the Deaf community. Most days, deafness feels less like a medical problem and more like being part of a minority culture. Read it on xoJane> |
On "Pimping One's Heritage," Or Things White Men Say to Feel Better About Themselves
Having been at work on a novel about the civil wars in Yugoslavia for a few years now, I often find myself oscillating between worry and defiance in the matter of being pegged as an “ethnic writer.” Technically a Second World country in the Cold War era, the former Yugoslavia is just as soon considered the Third World by most Americans who don’t know the Second World was even a thing.
Read it on Apogee > |
Editorial Work
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Blunderbuss, Fiction Editor"We are Blunderbuss, a web magazine of arts, culture, and politics, an ordnance of fire and improvisation. What ties together these essays, stories, poems, photographs, comics, and other bits of aesthetic shrapnel is a common attitude of visceral humanism. We aim for earnest noise. We want to splash in the mud of lived experience, to battle for a radical empathy, and to provide a megaphone to howling assertions of human subjectivity." Visit Blunderbuss >
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