Wild Swimming

On the dangers, joys, and damp insurgency of public water

Deakin, once stopped by a river keeper, was asked, “Does that fence mean anything to you?” Deakin leapt over the fence invoking Woody Guthrie’s oft-skipped verse, “A sign was painted said, private property. But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing. This land was made for you and me.” Deakin lived in a country with an established Right to Roam. He lived in a country with sensible gun laws. Any wild swimmer in America feels the tension of private property. My worst fears in plotting my own long swim come not from the dread of cold or pollution or drowning or exhaustion or sludge or algae or even water snakes but rather from the fear I’ll encounter an angry human with a gun. In Orion Magazine 

 

The Wild Delirium of Loving Language

The sun will set soon. Birds come to the feeder. Each bird is magnificent. Each bird is weird. How did the birds get so weird? A bright red head, spiky tufts, yellow eyes, pink feet, hidden fluorescence, the ability to fly. How did the word “weird” get so weird? And my hands, they are also weird. I’m watching the weird world, the weird birds when a thought arrives from nowhere. What if I’ve been dead for a long time? What if I’ve been dead my whole life? If I am dead, the strangeness of existence is momentarily comprehensible. 

Citizens of the Peace

Department of the Interior: What happens to the dirt, the trees, the birds, the people of a place where violence and war have raged for centuries, where people have been slaughtered, where people have been enslaved, brutalized, impoverished, incarcerated, and controlled in order to deny death? 

An excerpt from The Unwritten Book in Orion Magazine.

Ghosts at the Liquor Store

 

When my oldest daughter was eight—near the same age I was when I watched my parents’ parties—she and I drove past a sign, “Spirit Shoppe.” “For a minute,” she said, “I thought we could buy a ghost there.” A sudden dawn. Yes, we could. Ghosts are exactly what we’re buying at the liquor store. Booze is haunted.

Ghosts at the Liquor Store, an excerpt from my new collection, The Unwritten Book, at the New Yorker.

Go, Team

 There was a woman, and everyone watched. Including me. We were at the fields where the kids play soccer. You know?”

“I’m there three times a week.”

“The place is surrounded by woods.”

“I know. Three days a week. No joke. Were the kids playing?”

“That’s why we noticed her. She walked across the field mid-game like she didn’t even see the rest of us and disappeared into the woods. The fireflies had started. Maybe 40 minutes before dark? The game must’ve been close to ending. In fact, it did end soon after.”

“I was there,” another mother says. “I saw her go.”

New story at The Atlantic Monthly. 

Indelible in the Hippocampus

Out now, this wrenching and powerful collection of writing from the #MeToo movement. Edited by Shelly Oria, published by McSweeney's with fiction, essays, poetry and more from Kaitlyn Greenidge, Melissa Febos, Syreeta McFadden, Rebecca Schiff, Diana Spechler, Hossannah Asuncion, Nelly Reifler, Courtney Zoffness, Quito Ziegler, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Jolie Holland, Lynn Melnick, Caitlin Delohery, Caitlin Donohue, Gabrielle Bellot, Karissa Chen, Elissa Schappell, Samantha Hunt, Honor Moore, Donika Kelly, Paisley Rekdal, Hafizah Geter, and Shelly Oria. Indelible in the Hippocampus.

Tide is High

It was a dark and stormy night, and the ship was on the sea. The captain said, "Sailor, tell us a story," and the sailor began, "It was a dark and stormy night and the ship was on the sea."

Tin House Books is republishing my first novel, The Seas, on July 10th. This time, new and improved! With an introduction by the unparalleled Maggie Nelson. 

Boston, New York, Hudson Valley people, please come celebrate!

July 10, Oblong Books, Rhinebeck, NY

July 12, Greenlight Books, Brooklyn, NY 

July 17, Newtonville Books, Newtonville, MA