Nonfiction

Entbehre gern was du nicht has “To willingly renounce what you do not possess.” Three days after the bird died in the attic, the whole house reeked of rotting meat. The rooms seemed to change color, a brown, speckled, feathery … Continue reading →

It’s burning season. We circle around Mike, the fire boss, in his Iowa City toy-strewn backyard, while Mike, muscled and unshaven, toes an action figure the way a bear paws the open wound of a tree trunk. “Today’s a big … Continue reading →

It is an acknowledged truth that the dominant mode in contemporary poetry is the associative. A cursory glance through the nation’s top journals, or at its most prestigious first-book prizes or its most celebrated contemporary anthologies—at those points, that is, … Continue reading →

A summer evening on a bridge over Soldier Creek, ten miles north of Topeka, Kansas. The concrete bridge spans two wooded banks that drop steeply into a stream 40 feet below. The water eases around a bend from the west … Continue reading →