Recent Published Pieces
FICTION
It started right away. The looks, which, by now, D.J. had come to expect. But this time, and from the moment he walked into the classroom, there was a hostility...
FICTION
It didn’t get real bad, and my husband wouldn’t even talk about it, until our son’s senior year. Another concussion, but we didn’t call it that...
POETRY
The thing about Charlie Mingus Jr.—who clattered onto the scene like a grand piano in a punch bowl—is that he also was young once. More than...
POETRY
He couldn’t face the words, he wrote,
until he made it back from the track.
For a man famous for his refusal
to use metaphors, telling it straight like a tire iron...
POETRY
Nervous and unnerved this evening, alone:
Searching for solace, something not unlike prayer.
A hope that the past will not repeat itself,
Progress: a preemptive strike, this procedure...
NON-FICTION
I was in a church for the first time in forever. The church where I received the Sacrament of Confirmation. The church where my parents celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The church where my sister...
NON-FICTION
Denial is like a dyke—the water is wide, waiting, impassive. You’re never certain but most of the time you know, you sense the security of that invisible shield; it’s only when...
NON-FICTION
Take a guy.
Let’s say he is about my age: old enough to own a place and pay almost all his bills sometimes; young enough to understand that he is not getting any younger. Add a dose of fresh alienation...
POETRY
At least Bach believed in God—this is what saved him.
Can you fathom that freedom, the peace of such certainty?
In thrall to exigency, at once owned yet refusing...
POETRY
This busy bee, at the end of a life like clockwork,
a symphony of service to everything but herself—
wings snatched in a world blinded by the way it is...
POETRY
He knew, somewhere deep within the bilious machinery
of an unburdened heart, that black money would mingle
with the bones and drowned souls of all his shipmates...
POETRY
Moe from the Three Stooges with his black and white aggression, and instinctively understanding the utility of violence in vaudeville and silent acting; the pointed finger in your face, one slap predicting another, and so on...
View All Published Pieces
Maryland Literary Review: The Gold Bullet
Flash Fiction Magazine: In My Cups
Porter House Review: That’s Why God Made Men
Exterminating Angel: Anodyne Ever After
Palooka: The Letter My Father Never Wrote Me
805 Lit + Art: This Kind of Man
Streetlight: Come and Get My Gun
Panorama, The Journal of Intelligent Travel: Philippi
Dash Journal: Later, That Same Morning
The Chaffin Journal: Life Without Onions
intima, a journal of narrative medicine: Waiting Room
Twisted Vine Lit Arts Journal: Unbroken Things
Reflex Press: A Personal History of Everything
The Tiny Journal: A Brief Catalog of Mostly Forgivable Thoughts
Blue Mountain Review: Lightnin’ Hopkins’s Bottle
The Decadent Review: Richard Pryor on the Sunset Strip, 1982
Jerry Jazz Musician: Chet Baker’s Smog
Washington Writers’ Publishing House: Ghost Poem
Blue Mountain Review: South Loudoun Street: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
The Decadent Review: Chef’s Second Chance
Plum Tree Tavern: The Voices in Your Head
Plum Tree Tavern: South Loudoun Street, First Sustained Frost
The Remington Review: I Want to Write Poems
Decolonial Passage: Howlin’ Wolf’s Harp
Jerry Jazz Musician: Ornette Coleman’s Question
805 Lit + Art: Hagler and Hearns, 1985
Triggerfish Critical Review: The Insane Dog in the Alley
Triggerfish Critical Review: South Loudoun Street, Mid-Afternoon Saturday
Blood & Thunder Review: My Uncle’s Garage
Jerry Jazz Musician: Thelonious Monk’s Moods
The Good Men Project: Chickens
The Good Men Project: Can Your Family Afford to Lose You?
The Good Men Project: Jake LaMotta’s Rage
The Decadent Review: After Chester Higgins’s “Bowery Denizen, 1985”
Exterminating Angel Press: As the Obituary Section Gets Bigger
The Daily Drunk: Something to Remember Me By
The Decadent Review: John Coltrane's Ascent
Book of Matches: Anthropogenic
Ink Pantry: Even the Ugly Blueberry, Dog is God Backwards or Vice Versa, Knights & Squires (Redux)
Jerry Jazz Musician: Sun Ra's Spaceship
The Daily Drunk: Something To Remember Me By
This is What America Looks Like (Anthology): South Loudoun Street, After Midnight, Tonight
The Good Men Project: Me Three
Exterminating Angel: Himmler’s First Blasphemy
Jerry Jazz Musician: Booker Little’s Deliverance
Burningword Literary Journal: Sonny Rollins’s Bridge
The Good Men Project: What Gets Heard When Men Won’t Speak
Jerry Jazz Musician: Rahsaan Kirk’s Dream
Sepia: On seeing a scanned Polaroid of a friend before a Grateful Dead show, 1980-something
Empty Mirror: Shafi Hadi’s Silence
The Good Men Project: My Father’s Silence
The Good Men Project: Private Pyle’s Pain
The Good Men Project: The things preparing for a colonoscopy procedure prepares you for
The Good Men Project: Drunk White Dudes Fighting
The Good Men Project: Can Your Family Afford to Lose You?
The Good Men Project: Jake LaMotta’s Rage
Exterminating Angel: The Old Man on the Beach with a Metal Detector
Jerry Jazz Musician: Thelonious Monk’s Moods
Jerry Jazz Musician: John Coltrane’s Cancer
Voice Male Magazine: What a Wonderful World?
Nine Cloud Journal: We Were Too Young to be That Old
Bethesda Magazine (Poetry Contest: 2nd Place): Notes from Underground
Exterminating Angel: Peregrination
Written in Arlington (Anthology): Memorial Day
Rough Cut Press: Why the Car Horn is the Perfect Metaphor for Capitalism
Sequestrum: Howlin’ Wolf’s Arena, Bud Powell’s Brain, Sun Ra’s Spaceship
Triggerfish: Overtaking a jogger, by bike, on Martha’s Vineyard, As Opposed to Prayer
The New Verse News: Wake
Burningword Literary Journal: Charles Mingus’s Miracle (Pushcart Prize nominated)
Carbon Culture Review: My Wife’s Scars, Night Shift, Incursion, Gatlato el Rijla
Panoply: Liz Taylor’s Talents
Beltway Poetry Quarterly: Work Song
Poetry Matters Project: Work-in-Progress
People’s Tribune: The Voices in Your Head
Sport Literate: Joey Kocur’s Fist
Blotterature: Kurt Vonnegut’s Cigarettes
Linden Avenue: Charles Bukowski’s Bounty
Five:2:One Journal: Charlie Parker’s Premonition
Gyroscope: To the ones that got away
Shot Glass Journal: Intimation
The Sound and Vision of Pharoah Sanders
Ray Liotta: Goodbye to a Goodfella
William Hurt: The Complete Package
The Centennial of Charles Mingus
Black and Blue Collar: A Triptych
Exterminating Angel Press: Black and Blue Collar: A Triptych
The PEN/Faulkner Literary Conversations: CRISIS, with T.C. Boyle, Jenny Offill, and Nnedi Okorafor
Authority Magazine: Five Things You Need To Write Powerful and Evocative Poetry
The Weeklings Archives
Exterminating Angel Magazine: Backs to the Future
Exterminating Angel Magazine: Liability
Medium: New World Man, An Appreciation of Neil Peart
PopMatters: Sitting on Top of the World: An Appreciation of Ginger Baker
PopMatters: Ric Ocasek, Just What We Needed
PopMatters: I Like to Re-Watch or, Movies on My Mind
PopMatters: Why Dead Man is Jim Jarmusch’s Masterpiece
Memoir Magazine: Hard To Get Over Lonely People
PopMatters: He’s Martin Amis…And We’re NotJust Say (N)Oprah or, Make Great American Again
Donald Trump: The Man in America’s Mirror
How To Kill a Cliche: Celebrating Sam Shepard
The 100 Best Classic Prog-Rock Albums
On Hipgnosis
Chuck Berry Reinvented Music, and America
Worst Americans: Cruel DeVos
The Weeklings: Participation Trophy Politics
The Weeklings: Tiny Crowds, Tiny Hands vs. Huge Crowds, Huge Hearts
The Weeklings: Cheer Up, Trump Haters: It’ll Get Worse!
The Weeklings: The Dems Can’t Win if They Won’t Fight
The Weeklings: Thom Jones, The Pugilist at Rest (in Peace)
The Weeklings: Do Atheists Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Weeklings: Rich Assholes Paying No Taxes is Unpatriotic
The Weeklings: Taxi Driver, 40 Thoughts for 40 Years
PopMatters: Led Zeppelin, Day by Day
The Weeklings: Three Perfect Albums, Ten Years Later
PopMatters: One Shot: Remembering Cimino’s Masterpiece The Deer Hunter
The Weeklings: Some Men Just Want to Watch the World BERN
The Weeklings: 50 Bullet Points Concerning America’s Gun Psychosis
The Weeklings: “20 Minutes of Action” Warrants More Than 15 Minutes of Outrage
The Weeklings: MURPHY’S LAWS: 46 Infallible Observations for 46 Years
The Weeklings: Talking Trees
The Weeklings: David Bowie, The Man Who Owned the World
The Weeklings: Bernin for You
The Weeklings: Hard To Get Over Lonely People
PopMatters: Reassessing Black Sabbath’s Unholy Trinity
Elephant Journal: On Loving & Losing Man’s Best Friends
The Weeklings: O’Connor and Coltrane: Saints of American Art
PopMatters: The 25 Best Classic Progressive Rock Albums
PopMatters: Edgar Allan Poe’s 10 Best Stories
The Weeklings: Over/Under the Volcano
Salon: On Losing Faith and Finding Myself
The Weeklings: Punch Drunker: The 50 Greatest Movie Fights of All Time
The Quivering Pen: My First Time
The Next Best Book Blog: Where Writers Write
The Weeklings: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before
The Weeklings: The 50 Greatest Hockey Enforcer Names of All Time
The Weeklings: April 15, 1985: The Fight
The Weeklings: In Defense of Stephen King
The Weeklings: Sorry, Charlie
The Weeklings: What We Talk about When We Talk about Sex (in Fiction)
The Weeklings: The Problem with The Homeless Problem
The Weeklings: The Power of Political Narrative Part One (GOP)
The Weeklings: The Power of Political Narrative Part Two (DEMS)
Punchnel’s: Mellow My Mind, or A Lesson in Life Imitating Art
Elephant Journal: Sanctuary, A Path Through Grief
PopMatters: We’ve Seen This Movie Before –Making Sense of Philip Seymour Hoffman
PopMatters: Bright Moments Past: On Music and Loss
Punchnel’s: A Spy in the House of Love
CEA Digital Dialogue: The Intersection of Art and Innovation: Looking at the Music and Book Industries