In the laptop a field, in the field all these pixels. On the track-pad an inching of fingers. What to check, check everything. Check, but only for a minute. Checking is a kind of duty, knowing what needs known. But where’s the edges of this field. Where’s the tab where…

We rode our bikes out to the farm stand — a farm stand with ice cream, with an ice cream window, and we got the peanut butter, and we got the double chocolate. The teen in his apron, his scoops copious, grandiose. He was dedicated, adept with gesture. Elbow deep…

When I moved to Franklinton, I told myself I wasn’t displacing anyone — Here’s a sentence for you: “They’re building the luxury apartments, called River & Rich, on a former public housing site.” It reads like an excerpt of a novel — one that’s not especially good, but very moral and sincere. …

Economic segregation in America’s heartland — It’s Friday and I’m at the bar, feeling festive because my husband and I just closed on a house. I’d thought our house was on Siebert Street, in the Southside neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. But now I know it’s in the death zone. At least this is what the acquaintance…

The bus is slow, rerouted, going down the wrong street. This would’ve been annoying, before. It’s Friday; the space that would’ve once contained my annoyance about stuff like buses is inhabited with something that feels like a heavy wet cloth placed on my face. I can’t seem to get annoyed…

“You’ve got to go out, and you’ve got to get your friends, and you’ve got to get everybody you know, and you gotta watch the polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas.” – Donald Trump, Manheim PA rally I type the phrase certain areas into…

On the second Wednesday it’s halfway decent Kung Pao Chicken at the cafeteria’s Global Café. Then, at 8:00, it’s time for the Politics Panel. This writers’ conference is almost over, a bodiless end-of-camp feeling. Just when we’ve learned the most direct path from the auditorium to the dorms; just when…

[White people] are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. — James Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook” When I was a girl, I had a bedspread that was ruffled and yellow like a southern belle’s…

Some thoughts, in no particular order. 1. To the people who say they’re sorry to hear that I live in a sketchy neighborhood: America is a sketchy neighborhood. The key-card dorms of Ivy League colleges are a sketchy neighborhood. Suburban pools beaming out other-planetary light are a sketchy neighborhood. Leather-bolstered…