What the Brooke’s Point Farmer Taught Me

What the Brooke’s Point Farmer Taught Me

There are things bigger than me. Like husking the coconutto sip its water,hacking the shell, and scraping the meatinto strands before the third moon sets. Perhaps your oracle eye fishesin the shallows for the glimmer of a treasurechest in the waters off this Palawan...
Divine Sorrow in Baguio City

Divine Sorrow in Baguio City

The world is woven in a hazethinner than white,cloaking this bay of people who have finally learned to wait.An idol, eternally squatting, staresout the window of a divine sorrow. The instance between fog and rain dangles on the tip of my tongue. Such precipitation is...
You Ain’t Shit

You Ain’t Shit

You ain’t shit North Dakota – you’re all snow and flat and forever horizon. You fly-over state. You MAGA hat, Fox News junkie.The year I left it snowed on June 1st. June 1st you motherfucker.Can’t bury the dead in a North Dakota winter unless you bonfire first.My 18th...
Hiraeth in California

Hiraeth in California

Photo by Mike Towber, Some rights reserved.  for Michael Wells You tell me a staircase that leads to nowhere is your recurring dream just moments before you teach me the Welsh word hiraeth, and it’s as if you’ve used a magic spell: I now have that intense homesickness...
On the Spiritual Edge, Outside Florence

On the Spiritual Edge, Outside Florence

Photo: Corrie Pappas My friend Alberto told me a ghost story once I’ll never forget. He works at the 12th-century Castello del Trebbio, outside of Florence. I wanted to find out more about the Pazzi family, who lived there in the 15th century. They were a banking...
If you were here my love, you’d be all talk

If you were here my love, you’d be all talk

of loadbearing supports and span-riseratios. Of harmonic proportionsand Pythagorean mysticism. I couldn’t marvel at the bright shops jutting from the Ponte Vecchiowithout a lecture on ancient architectureand the ongoing perils of gravity. I couldn’t wonder aloud how...