Shut Me Down
A poem by Holly Day.
True Story of a Sandwich
the Parker Sub doesn't want those things. It likes simple. Plain. Which is why it's something a simple and plain man has to ask for. But I am a Parker. And I do want those: the pepper, the onions, the upgrades. That’s because I see our sub as a project, not a perfected object.
On Running Out of Gas in Rural Missouri
Notes on fatherhood and petroleum
A Bungalow of My Own
Every time I moved felt like facing my entire life all over again.
The Common Prayer of Immoderate Soils
Now there's an ubiquitous phrase on the Plains: we excel at "putting down roots"...Growing up in Kansas there is quite the opposite idea. Less so roots and more so treacherous vines.
My Midwestern Fleetwood Mac
She came from a dying Rust Belt town in southeast Ohio, and I came from a famously dying Rust Belt town an hour north of Detroit. We were both oldest children, with the same letter leading our first and last name. Our birthdays were one day apart. And, we both loved Fleetwood Mac.
Today I Laid a Crayfish at Your Grave
"I kneeled at the stump where we laid the Ford agate,/Made up spells and secrets..."