writer. editor. digital media expert. girl of the creative persuasion.
maybe it was just one last story,
the greatest:
life.
welcome.
nobody knows
evidence was destroyed —
no fear,
no shame.
volcanic vents
and unbroken thread
nearly 4 billion years old
discern day from night.
oh, the things molecules do.
NOTE: The “COSMOS” poems are a true experiment. They’re iterations of previous “found text” poems I wrote, using Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” as source material. They appear in their original form on my Medium page.
I mean, this one did. I turned it over and over again, like stones in water, finding things that glimmered and caught the sun. But there never felt like a real sense of cohesion.
I’d also add that it’s one of the more experimental essays I’ve done. So experimental and feeling/sensory-oriented that I considered categorizing it as something else. But the truth is, it’s the truth. It’s real life. So regardless of how uncomfortable I was putting something that was abstract out there, it is what it is.
,
Here’s an excerpt, and you can read the whole thing on Medium.
I think we were supposed to run away with each other long before this. There was that night on the motorcycle, the loud buzzing engine that cracked through the air heavy with rain threat, as we took the backroads and their curves too fast in a rush to get to the lake, my white fingers pressed into your ribs.
You write to tell me you have not stopped listening since I left and your faith startles me. I cannot handle the music right now. There is too much noise, or too much feeling, or too many words. After the song’s opening seconds I am already switching to the next. There is no irony here, only direct correlation. I am, have become, noncommittal. “I am not the girl you feel in love with,” I hear myself say. I am almost telling the truth.
Read the full essay.
“Basic laws of physics: how to lodge a hook in your head. Treble means three. Simple motions. Hold, run, cast. You tell the story for show now, choosing words carefully, measuring impact, showing ownership of memory. I can tell it too, that is the subtext of what you’re saying. But you’re not trying to compete. You are sharing. This is our memory. You should have some say in its resurrection.”
This essay is about blood, literally: brother and sister and other. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. I’m grateful to Rappahannock Review for giving it a home, especially among so much fantastic talent (Brian Oliu and BJ Hollars, to name a mere few).
Read “Of Blood” in Rappahannock Review here.
“It’s like being underwater: the loudest thing you hear are your thoughts. Voices are garbled syllables with distorted time signals, they are far off and distant. It is easy to ignore, easy to give in to the indulgence of living in one’s own head. This is what it’s like to be semi-deaf, to be increasingly deaf.”
— You can read my essay on FANZINE, as part of their incredible Body Maps series.
I’ve got some feelings about this. I am impressed that she turned Franco down. I am also weirdly proud of her. I want to give her a high-five. And a hug, since of course the Collective Asshole of the Internet turned its claws on her once the story broke.
“Sports Illustrated seems to be treading into weird territory, reappropriating what was initially created as a child’s plaything into a sex object to be featured on the cover of its always-anticipated Swimsuit Edition.”
I wrote a piece on the Barbie + Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition collaboration for Luna Luna Mag. Go read it!
