Writing

Selected Publications

“Where the Uktena Stays,” Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work

That was the summer we pretended to believe. Everyone seemed to have a cousin who had seen it, or more likely a cousin who knew someone who had seen it. Never a brother or sister, of course, but cousins were good enough for us. There were even official reports, statements and diagrams recorded by straight-faced sheriff’s deputies and typed up later—laughingly, I assumed—at the Cornelius Police Station. When these reports came in, Mayor Dale, whose platform in the last election had promised increased tourism for Lake Norman and Cornelius, demanded to see each one. And because he was also the publisher of the Lake Norman Citizen, he made sure they were headlined on the front page, right beside shots of the lake: the flat, dark water static with promise.

“Dirt in the Blood,” Trigger

Best of the Net Winner, 2012

I need more dirt in my blood. At least, that’s what my grandfather told me when I was seven, maybe eight, but I didn’t remember that phrase until last Friday night when I saw a guy hit his girlfriend as she came out of the bathroom at Jackson’s. It was a quick, mean slap, and then he dragged her out of the bar, past the doorman, by her wrist. It’s been with me for a week now: You need more dirt in your blood. My grandfather said this to me because I was crying after he gave me what he called a frogger, a sharp pinch of the bicep that left a bluish-green bruise on my arm for days. This was before he died, back when he used to grill hamburgers and hotdogs by his swimming pool on summer afternoons, back when he felt it his duty to teach me and my brother how to toughen up as the meat hissed over the charcoal. What I remember even more than that pain, though, is looking at my grandfather’s face, and then at his dark knees, as my vision grew blurry and the embarrassment began to seethe toward anger.

“Famous in Branson,” River Styx

River Styx Schlafly Beer Micro-Brew Micro-Fiction Contest Winner, 2012

On the way home, Dex reads billboards from the passenger seat. “Two for one,” he says. “Take exit two miles.” He stares out the windshield, his gauze-heavy head bobbing. “Yes,” Jodie says. “Good.” But she doesn’t turn to him. Instead, she looks at her hands on the steering wheel, notices how dry they are. Six weeks of hospital soap and her knuckles are rough and cracked. “Mac’s Spirit Shop,” Dex says to no one. The syllables are stuck to the roof of his mouth and he nudges them out. She knows he doesn’t remember the fall, two days before their third anniversary.

“Preacher Stories,” Glimmer Train

Glimmer Train Fiction Open, 2nd Place, 2007

In the beginning, I am six years old and riding in the front seat of our old Ford Station Wagon, sitting up front between both of my parents as I snack on Cheerios from a plastic sandwich bag and my father winds our big car around roads that are just packed dirt with grass trying to grow between the twin tire tracks, Appalachian roads you can only use between the washout rains in the spring and the hard ice of winter . And if I could see out the front windshield, I would see oak trees and maples, but I can’t. All I can hear is the occasional scrape of a limb on the side doors, or the undercarriage of the station wagon dragging across large rocks. Because I can’t watch what’s coming, I sway with the bumps and listen to the stories my father tells—preacher stories that he is practicing for tonight’s sermon—until, every once in a while, he eases the car to a stop, gets out, and picks up a copperhead or a canebrake that lay coiled in the middle of the road. He drops it into a wire cage on the backseat.

Image Credits

“Where the Uktena Stays” photo by Ethan Sees from Pexels

“Dirt in the Blood” photo by Francesco Paggiaro from Pexels

“Famous in Branson” photo by Athena from Pexels

“Preacher Stories,” photo by Глеб Коровко from Pexels