Mar 29, 2021Mad As Birds, What Makes Us. Love.Oh, love, oh, girls. What makes us what we are. What changes us and when and how does the transformation take place? I can say that these things happened slowly, or that they happened all at once. Both would be true. We were girls, we three, and then it changed…Fiction13 min read
Mar 19, 2021Sparrow, Just BarelySo a boy finds a sparrow. So he bends down to look at her tiny tufted body prone on the pavement. So he thinks she’s dead, so he nudges her gently with the toe of his boot. So he sees a stirring, a papery flutter of heartbeat beneath her tiny…Poetry2 min read
Mar 19, 2021My only weakness is — well nevermind, nevermind. (New Wave cento)The traffic is waiting. Outside, we’re walking through town. We walk like a ghost, keep on shuf-shuf-shuffling to this ghost dance beat. Up, down, turn around. Please. Don’t let me hit the ground. Oh, I see the light, and the heated couplings in the sun. Or is that untrue? Somewhere on my body, if you look real…Poetry2 min read
Mar 3, 2021How To Write A Poem1. Most poems come from brilliancy. Hang your brilliancy upside down from a gambrel on a meat pole to skin it. 2. In the morning before dressing, punch a hole in the skin between the poem’s knee and rear tendon. Light incense, then hoist it up and meditate. 3. Receive…Poetry3 min read
Feb 14, 2021Cento for Still Being in Love After All These YearsDearest husband, Other loves I have known. One an impossible song of desire, lush and electrified. Another — the heart within its glossy feathers. I have known so much of vagrant love; a pile of fur and feathers, leather and oilstain, bejeweled heartbreakers. They went away. * * * Beloved…Poetry3 min read
Oct 18, 2020To Be HauntedOne need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place. — Emily Dickinson Tell me your ghosts. The things that follow you down hallways like a whiff of lavender hidden in the folds of your grandmother’s scarf, the…Personal Essay9 min read
May 19, 2019Member-onlyAre You Leaving for the Country?Are You Leaving for the Country?Lyric Essay3 min read
Published in Memoir Mixtapes·May 8, 2019Jessie Recommends: “Whiskey in the Jar” by Thin LizzyFifteen years ago, I lived two blocks from one of the coolest bars in Chicago. By day, Seanchai’s was an Irish pub, whose clientele was mainly old men. By night, it was a punk bar — specifically on Punk Rock Wednesdays. St. Patrick’s Day that year fell on a Wednesday…Music2 min read
Jan 2, 2019Scary Stories for Daring Girls to Tell in the DarkSo there’s this girl. Well, woman — young but not barely-legal, not jailbait — getting ready for a girl’s night out with her besties. She slicks on her favorite lipstick, deadgirl blood red, shimmies into her favorite skirt. Short, but not too short, almost too tight — she has to…Fiction5 min read
Dec 22, 2018The Future is Unwritten[The following was written in December 2015. You can listen to the accompanying soundtrack here.] The Future is Unwritten I tell the same stories, write about the same things, over and over. I’m always saying that telling our stories is revolutionary, that it can change the world, and I believe…Music25 min read
