The Lifespan of a Mourning Dove
byI was walking on 30th near Grape Street, where I live, and saw a man painting an apartment building all by himself. Right then I was thinking about how I…
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Parakeet
byHe had expected worse. The inevitable letdown after Christmas, the dead parakeet, the New Year’s to come, everything that had happened. But it wasn’t bad. It felt almost good, even,…
Where is Faye Hiding?
byMom and I’ve trained our eyes to focus intensely for hours. Whenever I’m in my childhood home, I unroll in the recliner and Mom perches on the upright chair that’s…
Not of This World
byThe nurses arrived throughout the day, a steady invasion of Laiken’s privacy. At breakfast, they balanced trays of lukewarm scrambled eggs, cups of tepid green tea. Later, they’d come and…
Missed Opportunities
byBy the spring of our freshman year of high school, Jimmy had been afforded sufficient opportunity to showcase his general—which is to say, abject and uncorrectable—lack of athleticism. Even under…
Giving My Brother Slides
byAs a kid, I was never fully accustomed to what it meant to faithfully watch the Super Bowl every year like most American families do. I never fully grasped what…
The Eaters
byWE CALLED OURSELVES THE EATERS BECAUSE WE ATE WHAT WE WERE SERVED. Every final Friday of the month, we got together as a group to devour as much as we…
The Godliness of Michael Jordan
byAny sport—yes, any of them—can be reduced to an absurdity, given even a moment’s thought. Keeping a ball above the ground, putting it in a certain place by a certain…
Beer: The Smell of Baseball
byI cannot help but associate baseball with beer, an association ironically brewed through the sense of smell rather than taste. Beer became baseball’s bridegroom after the Civil War. German brewers…
In Defense of Killing Them Softly
byThe 2012 neo-noir crime thriller Killing Them Softly polarized critics and audiences upon release, and it still does today. A good friend of mine told me he will never forget…