Ginny

Adam the astrophysics wiz kept a secret from us for years. A big one. We did not know what he was doing on the West Coast, in his little science kibbutz, collecting employees from the University of British Columbia. Today Natalie told me: “My son can turn mercury into radioactive gold.” and when I heard that, my heart leapt in my chest.

I had made the soup too quickly for a random date I had over for seder who balked at salty parsley. And it is not well skimmed. My legs are two wavy lines after the first cigarette of the day. I run the sifter over the top of the soup I am giving my mom Natalie: not my biological mother, but since 1999 she has assumed the role. If I do not have this soup clear by 9am, I will be late to knock on doors for the DSA. The yellow fat stares at me, remini -scent of the greasy pocke

Flash painting done the night my grandmother died

Drew some live flowers with my eyes closed and colored it in with them open. Had a sketch night with a friend and drew their goober cat, Mitch.

Two space dudes looking space drippy in some space duds

Short-term projects from a long-term hospital stay. Any drawings you see before April were done without access to many references

Take a long walk in a third-world capital. Touch each building like you own it. Take a slow, deliberate pace, as though you plant your flag with every step. Approach a busker. Take his instrument and play it the worst you can. If he played the fiddle, play with opposite hands. If it’s a wind, remove the reed altogether.

ACCOMPANYING PLAYLIST: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Jq8YtzjCahHacFkriCp0e?si=QlaR4EITTve5rDA3mDrpxQ&pi=Csy1o7uUTtioe

ACCOMPANYING PLAYLIST: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1BcJ2bzmxveE5xRsvdaMuw?si=PvO-nMAERKG2diggTgvmiA&pi=MJmbqHirRzS8S

The Eye When you're getting over a near-death experience, the word "fear" doesn't mean anything to you anymore. In a roundabout way, the reminder that you're vulnerable--that this great steel wall of your skin and brain is penetrable by something greater than you--makes you feel invincible. You become numb to small things, but you're paradoxically vigilant. God threw down a pair of golden glasses that cured your nearsightedness. They hit you on the head. You're told since yo

Backyard barbecue babes ephemeral like cicadas, air thick and dank with smoke. Chicago people don’t scare easy yet they tread the streets in fear for years, altogether an unsocial species. Don’t want anyone labeling their children. Don’t want to be ridiculed for profoundest moments, those associated with near- paranormal consensuses. Lake Michigan hauntings murders of the Midwest cemeteries of O’Hare: they do not compare. But to ask a real Neighborhood Man would yield, like t

Flash piece with prompt “mindfulness"

This was modified before its delivery. Milwaukee! Are you ready to get loud today? Thank you for joining us to voice the critical need to defend our democracy against a self-appointed oligarch, and to make a little mayhem on his birthday. I am [politician; list accolades]. Who here is exhausted of defending rights supposedly guaranteed to us in the Constitution? Each of us is dog tired of watching a government run by billionaires that serves billionaires, protects billionai

Upon answering a lobster phone, a small-biz Detroitian kinetic artist found himself speaking to Oba Oduduwa , the great Yoruba orisha , who asserted he admired the thought , but then politely asked for that tradition back. " And for the metal arokin , which really just a talking piggy bank , isn't it? A naked Furby - Pez for colonizer money? 'Ah-AH. Need food.' " Oduduwa engorged his eye sockets and blinked twice mechanically , pursing his handsome lips over his white teeth a

Ah, humanity: the headless hitchBOT on a Pennsylvania park bench.

I’m unsure what time of day it was when my headlamp started to dim. I bellowed for help in Spanish and Dutch to a vibrating echo. I knew beneath everything that it didn’t matter what scraps of language I knew to holler–no one else would be wandering under a kilometer of foreign dolomite. Stuck face-down in a belly crawl within a collapsing vein of a narrow sinkhole, left arm forward and right arm folded tight to my hip, I was suspended over a clear blue pool twitching with t

I lay awake in bed late one night, frozen in the shadow of a figure in my doorway: a six-foot three amigurumi man. I made him, tediously, in my garage—it took years off me. The wool spun hot through my hands as I wove his tan skin and fringed his Western-style jacket and slacks. Screaming fingers balmed with sheep grease, I crocheted a pair of mosaic-pattern cowboy boots for my Man. He wears a size 11.5. He must have cost me a million in wool, as stuffing alone came from a Do