Jerusalem, early February. Michael and I walk from West to East, past the Rolex store, down the old road to the Arab bus station. There are sparrows flying in circles above us, frozen …

        When I was twenty-six, I sought out my professor and asked to be chosen to accompany him on the prison creative writing workshop for reasons I couldn’t even articulate. The first …

        Three small beanbags rest in my right palm, waiting flight. They are meant to be globes in our spinning solar system: moon, Earth, sun. The moon leans against my middle finger, the …

How good it’s been to slide back the heart’s hood awhile, how fortunate there’s a heart and a covering for it, and that whatever is still warm has a chance             –Stephen Dunn, …

I have ended it five times. She forgets each day that it’s ended. Each day, another patient or a nurse tells her that I’ve left. She calls me in a panic and wants to know if it’s true. I say …

It had a lock and a key, the first book I wrote. A red leatherette five-year diary. The lock and key were the most important part—absolute privacy, the invitation to candor. A book that was a room …

This is winter as casserole, as the French word for saucepan. This is a season so freezing, it doubles back on itself and simmers. Sometimes, our bodies get so cold, they burn. Sometimes, in the …

“I have no manuscripts, no notebooks, no archives,” wrote Osip Mandelstam, “I have no handwriting because I never write. I alone in Russia work from the voice, while all around the bitch pack …