Illness flicks on a bare overhead bulb, illuminating a world previously dark. There is death, peering from behind a cracked door across the hall of a suburban New Jersey hospital with a smirk. Was he watching me the whole time? There is the world, in motion outside the window as fall drags its browning leaves from swaying trees. Has time always bent like this? These days around surgery are hazy. Rest is not a choice. Rest is a force that […]

Categories: essay

Sometimes, the dog thinks she’s a bird. Or the distinction between dog and bird becomes meaningless, so complete is her attention on a cluster of mourning doves in a blackjack oak or the turkey vultures circling overhead. There are vultures wherever there are people, but especially, it seems, here. They catch air currents as we walk circles in a dark wood alongside my parent’s retirement village in the Jersey pines.  High holy pandemic, and the mourning doves sing like gossip. […]

Categories: essay

At the Goodwill by my house, a regular cast of characters wanders the aisles, searching for hidden gems. Occasionally, there are treasures. The trick is to find them first. Ragtag, we circle, acolytes of good fortune. United in purpose, we summon luck: Work clothes and throwback Hall and Oates records amidst the Conway Twitty; flatware and heavy cutting boards, the wood not dulled by someone else’s blade. Read more at HAD… Published January 6, 2022

Categories: essay

StardustWillie NelsonApril 17, 1978Columbia Records On the back cover of my father’s copy of Stardust, Willie Nelson smiles, soft-focus mountains rising in the distance. It is magic hour, and his paragraphs, drawn drunk, fill the sky with haphazard loops and curves. Most of it is covered in Sharpie, illegible. But if I tilt the record toward the light, his ballpoint script shines through. “We just cling together.” “Apologizing with no mercy.” “Catholicism.” “Baby.” “Youth.” I think about my mother as I […]

Categories: essay

On New Jersey’s aquaculture maps, unfamiliar names shimmer. I am a land dweller, of the shore but not, like a sea glass shard laid across hot sand. City born but relocated, I’m composed of raw edges. I peer close, then closer, but the labels remain obscure: Dry Bay.Obes Thorofare.Tices Shoal.Graveling Point. Unfazed by my interest, the waters lap the shores of hidden inlets, flowing constant in a tongue unknown. Read more… Published August 7, 2020

Categories: essay

I. Denial. Some say it’s a Celtic thing. Others that I’m “kissed by nature.”  You’re blessed.  Special. That mark is a stroke of luck.  Thick and unruly, the first gray hair stakes its claim when I’m 15. Socially anxious with acne to match, this leaves no place to hide.  My dark hair is a thicket, and the white emerges in sharp contrast, drawn hastily. Once it starts, the trickle turns to flood. Read more… Published June 12, 2020

Categories: essay