Give Your Money to Mary Lane
The legendary Chicago blueswoman has never gotten her due.
Loiterers
A requiem for the small-town "hang-arounds."
Finding Refuge in Southwest Detroit
Since the early twentieth century, the area has been a safe haven for Latinx—including my family.
Returning to Pittsburgh
"For all the intervening years, Pittsburgh had lived in my memory...viewable but not touchable, sequestered behind a one-way mirror of time."
Power and Possibility in Dayton’s Oregon District
An elegy for a wounded place.
The Summer We Went to the Moon
That summer, my parents and I were arguing about God.
Crossing in Miller (1889)
"a man stands, balancing, // one foot on one line and the other on another, touching the pulse / of two emergent powers"
Traveling While Black
Learning the racial geography of Indiana as a young Black girl in the 1980s.
Opèksipu Catches Sun Before it Flows Beneath the Washington Street Bridge
"home is built upon the scaffolding / of a hundred thousand stories..."
Akron’s Vietnam
How the war touched one Northeast Ohio neighborhood.
Appalachian Sunday
"There’s no name/for the things/we do to survive."
Nuclear Power
A writer remembers her relationship with her father, an inspector of nuclear power plants.