A History of the Pride Flag in My Doorway
Notes on living and moving as an out queer person in the Rust Belt.
Around Lake Michigan on the Circle Tour
Sixty years ago, my parents took us on a driving tour of Lake Michigan, the quintessential Midwest road trip.
Trouble
"The jukebox at Pizza King didn’t bump any songs past / 1978 but we fed it quarters anyway"
Ode to Olcott
Olcott, New York—"The French Riviera of Lake Ontario"—has sunk and rebounded in a way so minor, yet major enough to feel like a triumph.
Great Dams on the Land
"When my son rides the Switch Back Gravity Rail over coal lines in Jim Thorpe, I hope to God the mountains are His and my boy might believe in his ancestor clans."
Lancaster is Burning
"The landscape of Fairfield County, Ohio sprouted the seeds of my imagination, helped them take root." [Excerpt]
meditations in the decline of western civilization
"this is how i ground myself. / i follow the writing on the wall."
A Minor Biographical Insight
"What I remember of South Bend is smoking in the back yard. / The small, short houses of a cheap and curbless neighborhood."
On the Van Galder from Wisconsin to O’Hare
"In Wisconsin, the Van Galder is a rite of passage for budget travelers of all stripes—students, retirees, the frugal, the working poor."
3666 Warren Avenue E. Detroit, MI 48207
"Somewhere the houses are rebuilding themselves./Sanding away the lead-coated paint from their siding."
Ancient Places
"Every curve & angle of us was a sign to the end of times; / ... but we were too high and mighty to hear the trumpet"
These Trespasses
"All over McKean County, we claimed the unwanted spaces that adults had left behind."