Pencil & Pen (Substack): Writerly World •

Another Wonderful Day

“Did you see the beautiful pollution sunrise?” my wife asks at breakfast. I peek through the bathroom window before sipping coffee and reading the news. Day-glow orange hovers on the horizon. “Fresh revelations,” reports a New York Times top story on the release of the Epstein files. Apparently those trafficked girls and young women, many of them abused by their own families, were considered objects—“if not to be sexually used, then to just be around, almost like furniture. They were viewed as disposable people.” [Read more ...]
The New York Times Modern Love: Tiny Love Stories (republished from Jan. 2024) •

How to Repair

My wife orders takeout with her iPhone, but it rejects her card. She snaps at me as I try to help. I collapse into silence, a protective shield. When we’re wounded, our tendency is to get small. Snippy. Mean spirited. In these moments I wonder how the world’s conflicts will ever be resolved when we two who have committed to loving one another would rather find fault than mend relatively minor transgressions. She asks for a hug, so I hold her. I make two cups of tea. Drape a blanket over shoulders. Small gestures, perhaps. But my heart feels giant.
Lit Mag Lounge: Publishing Diaries •

Publishing Diaries: On my flash essay “Roadside Markers,” published in Zone 3

The third draft was rejected from nine more journals: Hippocampus; Shenandoah; Atticus Review; Pigeon Pages; Gordon Square Review; Brevity; CRAFT; under the gum tree; and Flyway. However, the latter two replied, respectively: “there are many things we liked about your piece” and “please know our team enjoyed it.” When it placed among 15 finalists in Midway Journal’s Flash Prose and Poetry Contest, I was encouraged not to give up...
Zone 3 literary journal | 2023 finalist in Midway Journal's Flash Prose and Poetry Contest •

Roadside Markers

A fourth-grade friend and I sometimes defied our mothers’ orders to keep close, roller-skating from our suburban enclave to purchase candy at the strip mall a few miles away. Departing the safety of the sidewalk with our rhythmic scratch-scratch on cement, we dared to navigate the unbounded territory of asphalt, but always returned to her cul-de-sac where we’d choreograph disco moves until sundown. She’s the one who warned me about the woods. [Click to read more...]
We've Got Some Things to Say anthology | The Palisades Review 2024 | CRAFT 2023 Flash Prose Prize longlist •

There Was A Man Who

Once upon a time there was an old man sitting in a ballet school hallway, palm outstretched with sweets, preying on little ballerinas like me. Once and once more, again, and. There was a neighbor leaning casually naked upon his window on my way to school, up on there, and a stripper lingering in a swimming pool, calling my sixth-grade body sexy, I should come close, closer, so he could show me. Come here. Once there was an uncle pretending to kiss me, bending me backward like that photo of a soldier except his hand covered my mouth, a joke, just joking ...
About Place Journal: Shaping Destiny (Election Season, Before, During and After) •

Content Warning: And Once More, Again

More than 15 million people viewed Chanel Miller's victim impact statement online within a week of it going viral under the pseudonym Emily Doe. Yet in her memoir Miller explains how she’d struggled with how much to share her story outside of court proceedings... Do rapists worry themselves with such concerns? Do Brock or Brett or Donald ever fret over the lasting impact of their actions?
Substack: Paper-Pencil-Pen (content: death by suicide) •

writerly world: news & tidbits

Before I spent hours sobbing under covers, before we took another train to my paternal aunt and uncle in the Berkshires for my 55th birthday, before we extended our trip by a week to DC to be with my nephew’s parents and two older brothers (in their twenties), before we chose a cemetery plot under a cherry tree and buried his body, I stood by that lake, shaking, while geese honked their mournful cries, and talked to multiple family members on the phone. Shared anguish our only comfort.
Apartment Therapy: The Vibiest Towns in America •

I Was Priced Out of Buying in My Hometown, But I Decided to Stay as a Renter

When my wife and I needed to find a new place to live in January 2023, we didn’t want to leave Petaluma, a vibrant California town 40 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. We’d spent 15 years living on her family’s farm in Penngrove (a rural town just outside of Petaluma), first in a granny cottage and then the main house after her parents passed away, but Petaluma was our hub.
Longreads •

Stories of Quarantine and Upheaval: A Reading List on the Power of Personal Narrative

Here are six stories from diverse voices and literary publications that point to the profound power of personal narrative: a global record from multiple nuanced perspectives. [T]hese authors tackle social issues from structural racism and the stigma of disability to repressive political regimes. Each one chronicles the heartache of disconnection and demonstrates the importance of collective remembrance.
Lit Mag News •

Accepting Editorial Suggestions as a Path to Success

Not long ago, a poet who participated in my writing workshops asked for my advice about responding to editorial suggestions. A literary journal had accepted her first poem to be published in a biannual issue, but she questioned whether the editor understood the intention behind some of her craft decisions. Was there room for dialogue, including disagreement? Or did they expect her to defer to their expertise? I had no easy answer.
Women Who Submit (Lit) •

Breathe & Push: A Writer’s Work Begins Again and Again

Morning pages. Morning stillness. Starting anew on a Monday. Stars are still visible while birds sing up the day as you sit in your pajamas to write. If all you ever penned were these pages, would they be enough? Doubtful. Your hunger is a whisper, gnawing from within. No need to feed the beast an entire feast at once. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Start with a few words, a few pages. No pressure to produce.
Defuncted Journal (originally published at Toho Journal Online, 2016) •

Church Street Beat

One day I slipped into white bobby socks, shorts, and a beaded sweater buttoned at the top, stepped from that San Francisco Edwardian — still affordable before the dot-com boom — and clickety-clacked down Market Street. Heel-tapped around the queer street scene and skipped past Café San Marcos, site of an almost-kiss with a pink-lipsticked girl. Scuffed up to the Life Garden and stood, briefly, next to a man I knew, not knowing as I brushed past the NAMES Project that in a few months’ time “Richard,” too, would be stitched across a quilt.
Complete Sentence •

Mother Says

I’ll make you a little something to eat, just finish what’s on your plate and then brush your teeth, no, don’t lick your fingers, that’s obscene, use your napkin, please, would you stop picking your nose, and if you keep biting that lip it might peel right off, goddammit, get your feet off that chair, unless you want to pay for it, now why don’t you go get dressed, just holler when you’re ready, well, there’s no need to yell, I’m right here, why must you always torture me with that horrid sound...
Litro Magazine | Editor's Pick #EssaySaturday •

Destination Unknown

Two decades ago I met a futurist. Maggie wore a peasant blouse over her ruffled skirt, but she didn’t pull out a tarot deck as I’d imagined. Instead, she spread out a map. She drew an index finger up the coastline of Western Australia and marked our location, just east of Geraldton. "Everyone claims the Outback as the epitome of this country, but most people cloister in cities along the coast,” she said, pointing to Perth.
Cagibi “on the ground” special feature + annual Omnibus print issue | Memoir Monday selection | Longreads reading list •

Autumn Inferno

In the middle of the night, sirens startle me awake. My ears prick to the wind. Oak branches whip the sky like Medusa’s head of snakes—a raspy hiss. Plastic pool chairs scuttle across asphalt. Beside me in bed, my wife’s breath halts, sensing, before the cadence shifts back into slumber. I write in red ink while she sleeps. It’s fire season in California. October, my birthday month. Fall was always my favorite. But that was before.
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