I need to find some knotweed in Portland. I’m particularly fascinated with it right now and it tastes good. Most people don’t want to find knotweed. It’s a terrible invasive. Japanese knotweed is so tenacious it is listed as one of the world’s 100 worst invasive species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. …
After everything failed, I moved in with Stan in Northeast Portland for a few weeks until I could get my own place. Once the baby came I’d have something worked out, was my hope. I’d sold the Datsun for five hundred and started taking the bus to and from the Meadows. The scenery down Vancouver …
I published this piece on my blog, True STORIES. last year but, of course, it’s as timely as ever: She says it was like a bad after-school special, and laughs. But there is sadness in her eyes, and shame. Not much, but it is there, I think. I want to say the right things, but it …
It’s been a weird seven days or so. I’d been dreading Wednesday (May 15th) for a while now, but for me it came six days early and continues on. May 15th of this year would’ve been my grandfather’s 82nd birthday had he not died of dementia on January 29th, 2012. A lot of people have …
Last week I attended an English department lecture about writer Anita Loos. Confession: I attended it foremost because free food was promised (#gradlife) and secondly because I saw the word “feminism” in the talk’s title. The lecture, “Putting his Pictures in the Papers (1916): Anita Loos, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Technologies of Indirect Feminist Rhetoric,” …
When I was in college, I had a really terrible magazine writing teacher. She was hired as a “working professional,” so while she might have been a successful writer for independently-run arts and culture quarterlies, her idea of teaching was busy work and aligning ourselves with her ways of thinking (“Harper’s Bazaar is the bane of …
For the past few days, I haven’t been able to skim the headlines without hearing a regrettable single from 1999. I was planning on posting a link to the video here, but after enduring it myself I’ve decided that would be CULMLR (Cruel and Unusual Last Millennium Lowlight Rehash). It’s that diddy by the Lyte …
On Tuesday, May 7th, the United States Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office released its annual report on the rising sexual assault cases in the military. The survey estimates that 26,000 active-duty people in the armed forces, 6.1 percent of female respondents and 1.2 percent of male respondents, were sexually assaulted last … Continue reading »
Something For Mother’s Day: I stand in the middle of the shower and squeeze. The water washes over my body in a warm rush, but I still shiver. The stream falls across my face as I stand patiently under the spray. I concentrate with a furrowed brow, so the water funnels between my eyes, running … Continue reading »
This past weekend, during a swelteringly hot spring day, I hid inside a coffee shop with Lindsey Kugler (as writers are wont to do) to discuss her recently published book, HERE, sexual exploration through writing, and N’Sync fan fiction (yep, that’s right). Is sex writing scary? No. I have been doing sex writing for a … Continue reading »
I am not a survivalist. I don’t foresee a future when commercial food will not be available and food foraging will be a critical skill. The world is not going to end before the sun swells into a red giant, which won’t happen for another 5 billion years (and then there will be no Earth … Continue reading »
I first came across Martha Grover’s work back when I still lived in Virginia. I somehow got a copy of her long-running zine Somnambulist and loved it. I officially became hooked on Martha’s work after following her blog and reading the Grover Family Meeting Minutes, which eventually became Somnambulist #15 and are also featured in … Continue reading »
“Almost everything I write begins with dialogue,” Dorothy Allison told me when I interviewed her last week. “Then, trying to figure out who these people are. They have to be challenging enough, and make me curious enough to follow them, otherwise the story stalls.” I had seen Allison read aloud a story last July at … Continue reading »
I sat behind a car at a red light. It was winter in Minneapolis, so my windows were rolled up. I also had the radio on. But still I heard the woman screaming. I turned down my radio, trying to figure out where it was coming from. It was lasting for almost a minute. And then … Continue reading »
A few months back I was at a karaoke night in North Portland when I ran into a man who is what we call “Portland Famous”. I’m going to avoid naming him, but if you’ve been to Saturday Market at all over the last twenty years; you’ve probably seen him. I remember when I first … Continue reading »
(Read part one here and part two here) She said, do you have a condom? She had waited until the very last moment, her panties around her ankles. He said, not tonight. She said, but I can’t. He said, we’re not doing that tonight. She said, why not? He said, you have to wait for … Continue reading »
My name is missing. It’s missing on purpose. The person who penned this obituary decided to exclude my existence. Two of my wife’s family members died recently: Her 108-year-old great grandmother, and her grandfather, both on her maternal side. Their obituaries ran a month apart in the same small town Midwestern paper, both listing many … Continue reading »
