RIVER STYX ONLINE
NONFICTION
HOW TO DROWN IN AMERICA
“Within our first six months of dating, my boyfriend and I almost died together.”
THE CHICKEN, THE GOOSE, AND THE GANDER
“The room was humid and smelled of lavender cleaner and mold. Ma tried to dress it up for me, but the place was still a dump.”
FEMININE NIHILISTIC GOSPEL SONG
“For the first six months of the pandemic, I embraced a monastic lifestyle.”
LANDSCAPE ANXIETY
“John Gardner says there are two plots: man goes on a journey and a stranger comes to town.
In Ellensburg, I’m doing both.”
A LETTER TO MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON, ON MOVING FROM SOUTHEAST ALASKA TO NEW ENGLAND
“We may not live there anymore, but the truth is this: you will always know a wilder home…”
FROM SUGARCANE TO DIABETES
“In the harbor, moon jellies pushed their smocks through the tide as the steady barking of sea lions tickled the gulls into frenzied screams.”
FROM WHALE LORE
“In the harbor, moon jellies pushed their smocks through the tide as the steady barking of sea lions tickled the gulls into frenzied screams.”
MY UNRELIABLE SOURCE IS A BIRD
“My mother walked. Every day. Five miles. Sometimes ten. Rain never stopped her. Nor 110-degree temps. There’s Martha, people said, from as far away as three hundred feet. Her gait was unmistakable. Flat-footed, she slapped the stiff soles of her red orthopedic shoes against the asphalt. Short in stature, yet formidable in spirit, she held one hand on her aching hip, the other punched forward like a bird with a broken wing determined to get wherever the hell she was going.”
KIN
“In my family, there was a woman who knew how to fly. She had been pushed by a man, or perhaps the man’s wife, or perhaps the wife’s children, small fingers keen on seeing her fall. Her own daughter had been asleep when she stepped onto the balcony which might have a ledge which might have been a rooftop. Her daughter might have been a son who might have been my half uncle, which would make the woman not related to me at all.”
COMMON SENSE
“Before I left NYC to live in western South Dakota I did not know how much I did not know—that prairie grass undulates and shines like ocean waves in the wind, surprisingly verdant and smelling of rich earth. That the sky is a full dome best enjoyed from the view on a car’s hood, still warm from the sun and the perfect place to hold hands for the first time. That days and weeks would pass as we watched the towering clouds spark sideways with colored lightning, exploding into rain showers before becoming clear at night to more stars than you ever thought were possible to see.”
FRACTALS
“Every year on my birthday, my mom tells my birth story. In the middle of labor, she left her body and floated up to the ceiling then looked down and saw herself, in real time, lying in a hospital bed. Only she wasn’t herself looking down at herself. The person she was up above, near the ceiling, was me.”