The moment the things of the dead enter our lives, they begin another history. I inherited three gay histories, the archives of three gay men in my life. Two were family friends I called uncles. Their archives were straightforward in their queerness as they’d lived out and proud. Yet once I had finished going through their things,…
/ˈnεtˌwәrk/ Goose bumps are a good sign. More and more often these days, I find my eyes falling on just the thing I was looking for in an area of apparent chaos. More and more often these days, I find myself encountering significant floral debris just at my feet. Some weeks ago, during my first…
I had some vague idea that I would one day write a book (maybe a comic picaresque memoir) about having cancer, but it also feels like maybe I don’t have time for that. With what rapidity life follows my pen, etc. —Text to friend, December 28, 2025 I am used to dealing with the dead….
April 12, 2025 | Pets I always say that I hate nature, but the more I think about it, I find that I hate nature in the “american midwest” where nature is mostly grass and useless trees. My father was, above all else, a farmer. He hated planting useless trees; he only planted trees that…
—for Blaze You left home with nothing but a cell phone, left without your wallet, your keys, your glasses, without saying goodbye. Perhaps you forgot them. Perhaps you got a text and rushed outside without stopping to think about what you would need. Perhaps you were feeling flustered, impulsive. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you left…
Translated from the Spanish by Nina Perrotta And here I go again talking about what I eat and don’t eat and how I eat the things I eat. About how what happened to my body failed to disturb the precise balance of my mind, even though it was, in fact, obvious: I had pica, and…
My friend Clytia dropped me off near Point Reyes Station for a writers’ retreat at Mesa Refuge. It was my first writers’ residency, and as a scientist I had no idea what to expect. For so long I had organized my days with precision to pack in the tasks that made my career. Would I…
Our nonfiction winner is Ennis Smith, for his piece “Happy New Year.” This year’s nonfiction judge was Elisa Gabbert. Of Smith’s essay, she writes: This beautiful, swift, and complex portrait of a friend (“if that’s what you called that in-between place where ex-lovers lived”) is also a remembrance for times and places lost, for youth and…
We had a knife. A pot. Shoes. We had spoons, and needles, and glasses that shattered when we dropped them on hard floors. In the age of objects we worked out ideas with winches and rope. Levers and chocks. Muscles were trained to remember their jobs. Ideas moved down an arm to pens or hammers….
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