The Scent of Oud
I detected — above the waft of Auntie Anne’s pretzels and the affront of vanilla and eucalyptus from Bath and Body Works — the warm, musky scent of oud.
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ReadForeign Domestic
We live where the fog used to gather every morning, curtaining the streets and freeways in a misty haze. -
ReadMiseducated: Encounters with Blackness and Whiteness
When the Ferguson shooting and protests erupt in 2014, I am stuck in my own cocoon, mourning recent betrayals in my marriage. -
ReadEpiphanies
Before my jaw surgery, I got used to doctors holding my face in their hands. -
ReadThe Eye in his Head
In a tiny village in Southern Poland named “Mała,” a Catholic priest sexually abused dozens of underage girls -
ReadHolding Patterns
Today I’m too angry to know what to do with myself, so I take a very hot shower and listen to loud music -
ReadBecoming a Bridge Person in Precarious Times
I’ve been thinking a lot about bridges over the past year. -
ReadInheritance
The Great Patriotic War came to visit me again today. I was throwing out wild raspberries. -
ReadQueer is a Verb
In 2007, I had just freshly graduated from high school. I was a year ahead of my class and had put in the extra work due to acute boredom -
ReadFuel Crisis
“The car is hemorrhaging fuel,” I told Dad over the phone as we approached Grandma and Grandpa’s place. -
ReadPicture Me Rollin’
For three years, I boarded a bus in West Pullman, then transferred to the Red Line train to attend Chicago’s Roosevelt University. -
ReadIs this your first time?
There are things you can’t ask at the clinic. Among your prescribed list of acceptable questions: Where is the bathroom? -
ReadStill Life/Wallpaper: Paintings
Since the end of the Cambodian Civil War in 1975, and the horrific killing fields following the next four years, Cambodia has never recovered. -
ReadInheritance: A Dance
Many of the “Indians” — that’s what they call themselves and what we call them too — in our small Alaskan town live in a separate community called Saxman.
