Category: nonfiction
Essay in Southern Humanities Review: Fragments of Bone, Fragments of Light
The world I had imagined as inanimate was coming into animation—rock and plant in constant motion, each species of animal living along its own vivid timescale. And while I had always struggled with the idea of death, I now found myself wondering why I had only been troubled by this future I would not witness—and not everything in the past that I had already missed.
Read excerpt and purchase the full print issue at Southern Humanities Review
Essay in Southeast Review: Cumberland by Sail
“I am tiny on the scale of sand and sea—but whether or not I am here to see them, it’s reassuring to think that, at any given time, somewhere beneath the rippling surface among the beds of seagrass, manatees graze. I’d like to think that Cumberland is a lesson in tenacity, but barrier islands have always been shaped by the sea in response to the elements. Now, I wonder, will they last?”
Read the full essay in Southeast Review
or purchase the full print issue here!
New Essay & Photograph in Khôra: Scarification
“All summer, crowds have come to the canyon in steady currents, yet I’ve only felt small and solitary; deeply rooted is that particular form of loneliness that blooms in company. I kneel with the memory of your warm hand on my skin and unsown lands spread in my imagination. Every day I water and weed and watch the light change across striated stone blotted with juniper and cliff rose; formations I can put names to.”
Essay in EcoTheo Review
A short excerpt from my essay “Convergence” from the Summer 2022 issue of EcoTheo Review:
“The Gila River—opaque as butterscotch and laced with agricultural runoff—is ornamented with styrofoam cups, discarded truck tires and diapers engorged with river water. The vegetation is thick so it’s easiest to move in the river. I slide down the slick bank past the prints of a black bear whose movements I echo.
The calf-deep water is cool and ripples shimmy away from my footsteps like the fish that curl into eddies as I walk downstream. The Gila is one of the longest western rivers. Not so long ago, I could have floated from the headwaters in New Mexico through to the Gulf of California in a kayak or raft. Now, water is siphoned off into agriculture fields, reservoirs and canals that turn the Gila into a trickle halfway through its 500-mile journey towards the Colorado River. By the time it reaches this valley southeast of Phoenix, the Gila, whose headwaters are often called the birthplace of wilderness, is no more than an intermittent stream. My hiking boots saturate and sand fills their mesh as I wade, listening to the slur of my steps mix with the ensemble of birds calling along the river’s corridor. Under the shaded arbor of tamarisk, I pause. I am quiet. Sometimes you can only find a thing by being still.”
To read the full essay, purchase the issue (or subscribe!) by clicking here.
Two Summer Publications: Camas & Pidgeonholes
POINT COUNTS AND SHIFTING BASELINES in Camas Magazine
“Can we celebrate the wild just beyond the doorstep without conflating it with the wildness of places far from any doors? If we expect the wild to adapt to our cities and our lifestyles, where do we adapt to theirs. We must leave space and silence and open places for them to build their own nests, make their own paths through the desert, and communicate with each other in whisper songs.”
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THE FIRST TIME in Pidgeonholes
“He sounds like one of the mice that live in the house I will move to the first time I try to leave him, the ones I will set hard metal traps for in the kitchen. I will hear the bitter snap and squeak of them at night when I try to fall asleep but instead replay a recent conversation in which he tells me I am easy to love.”
New Essay: The House in the Desert
I have a short triptych out today in Hobart.
This essay is no longer available on Hobart, but
you can read the reprint in Variant Lit!
New Publication: What Happened on December 21st, 2019: A Retrospective
New words up today on Essay Daily!
…I had been working on an essay about fragments: fragments of bone, fragments of light, and what the space between these fragments can embody. I’m learning to pay attention to these spaces. A lot can happen in the subtext, in the distance between things, in the space of what is left out, in the time between December 21st and March 16th…