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Parenting
Poetry
My Father Got Beat
My father got beat / but he never beat me. / His skinny frame would tighten up, / he’d start to shake with a seething rage / at my errors, my arrogance, / he’d clench his bony fingers and say / “I’ll sock ya” but he never did.
April 2021Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Funeral For A Hamster
I was unable to protect my children from heartache. I couldn’t keep them from the pain of it. But I could ease their journey by helping them light their dead hamster’s funeral pyre.
April 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Nesting
They take turns at the feeders, but if one lingers too long, the others — usually males — will jabber insults until the offender leaves. I have a secret nickname for the house sparrows: Little A-holes.
March 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Rain Shadows
When you have been through something terrible, and you know deep down the outcome could have been otherwise, you develop a strange gratitude for everyday life. The smallest acts of generosity can make you cry.
February 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Sonny Boy Williamson
In a clearing in the woods alongside a country lane outside the town of Tutwiler in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, stands Sonny Boy Williamson’s granite grave marker. As we approach, we notice more of the glints beneath us, and notice the same silver glints piled atop the old monument.
January 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
A Terrible Wind
I pretended to be busy on my computer until she leaned so close to me I had to sit back and look up. She had my attention now. She smiled with one side of her mouth. “That was my mom,” she said. “Fucking Wicked Witch of the West.”
October 2020
The Dog-Eared Page
Easter Morning
Like peasants everywhere in the history / of the world ours can’t figure out why / they’re getting poorer. Their sons join / the army to get work being shot at.
August 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Night Cows
The cows showed up just as the world began to end. They were there when I returned to Minnesota from Manhattan, where I’d gone to pick up my older son after his spring 2020 college semester had been canceled.
August 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
For A Future You
I drop by on a Saturday. Your mom lets you answer my knock on the apartment door. The cap of your gastrostomy tube is outlined against your unicorn T-shirt.
August 2020
Poetry
Baptism
My daughter writes on her Father’s Day card, / “Thanks for baptizing me in the stream / and planting the seed of nature-love in my soul.” / Wow. I am a lucky man.
March 2020
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