What seems lost can be found in a bowl of golden fruit, offered in the year’s deepest dark
On Christmas Eve, I stand at the sink, pry open baseball navels, the perfect world of orange: heady zest to the nose, the bitter pith, my thumbs’ push, push to separate flesh from thick rind, not unlike pushing from the old year to the new, birthing the long hidden into daylight.
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On not letting inconvenient truths taint intoxicating moments
It’s hard to believe the whole of the world isn’t simply the sum of all the little worlds that look exactly like your own.
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Where’s the line between what deserves protection and what is deemed disposable?
Though our house had no special distinction, she had chosen our porch for the delivery, heaving across the dusty tiles, trusting us.
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With a little imagination, anything seems possible
I’m into porn. Cookbook porn. It’s a terrible habit.
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Multiple unpublished novels notwithstanding, I am a writer
The origin of my writing desire is obscure. There was no childhood epiphany, no early need to express myself through the written word, no family influence to credit or blame. The writing bug didn’t so much bite as burrow, so that by the time I finished graduate school it had tunneled into my mind.
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Reflections on Memphis from a Pismo summer
How exactly has it come to pass that Memphis, more than any of the places I have lived, speaks to me the loudest? Why exactly has Memphis gotten in my blood?
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