Every Mother an Icon
ESSAY
In the summer of 1980 my mother is eight months pregnant with her first child. She has black hair chopped at the cheeks, great legs and a face so solitary and fierce it feels indecent to look.
Monkey Jesus
ESSAY
Most truth is encased in broken bodies. My family, my church, myself, all suffer illness. But I honor the bodies I’ve inherited.
Ross Gay’s Radiant Joy
REVIEW
These writers who lived beside death revelled in what was alive, blooming and rooted. As a black man in America, Ross Gay is no different.
Toward a More Generous Way
REVIEW
Lynn Casteel Harper’s “On Vanishing” is a call for the robust re-imagining of Alzheimers and the way we respond to and care for each other.
Voluptuous Hell
ESSSAY
I spend all of my afternoons with Max, who is 6. He asks me how many ways there are to die. He asks me if I’d rather be a window or a tooth.
St. Agnes Cathedral, Detroit
POETRY
To crawl into the belly of the whale before the night’s heat has refused you…