Every fall, we carry the sled across the land. We follow the trees we have marked on other journeys. We travel from high up across snow to fields and highways through industry: railroads and mines, corn and wheat, shipping. At the ocean, we take our luggage out of the sled. The water carries it to…

The story of my life is a remake of an obscure Danish film whose title translates roughly to “The Cow Comes Home At Midnight.” The story of my life is the story of America writ large. It is meant as a cautionary tale about the perils of caution itself. No: it’s neither of those things,…

A man sits across from me, wrist wrapped in a bloodied rag. His knee bounces like it’s keeping time with a jackhammer. “Worried I hit the artery,” he says when he catches me staring. I tell him they would’ve rushed him in. “No one’s leaving you to bleed out,” I say. Seeming satisfied, he asks…

I’m gonna tell a lie, Lisa says. I saw your dad at Gino’s Pizza. On hump day. Wait, was he with Rachel? I ask.

Alone at home after school, David drops a treat the size and shape of a pencil eraser on the shaggy rug, then calls his best friend, Bear. A black nose sniffs circles around the bison pellet. Nostrils shiver like fish gills. David wiggles his toes and clutches the couch cushion. He holds himself back from…

As many of you must know by now, Antarctic poetry, wireless bras, the history of table tennis, online dating for older adults, bluegill fishing, and my collection of seventeenth century cookbooks are among my varied interests. Last weekend, while I sat in my Subaru gnawing Casey’s chips and waiting on my daughter to exit the…

The house wept like a Madonna statue whenever it rained, steady streams in the corners of the walls, the paint bubbling and blistering. The trees wept pears, when it rained and when it didn’t, grass-green fists with gnarled stems and woody warts, blossom-end rot and speckled spores. They gathered all the pears, the rotten ones…

It was the band’s first show, at a house party up in the hills about a twenty-minute drive away from the city. It was a three-bedroom house being rented out by seven college kids. They were hosting the party and had asked the band to play. They’d talked to the bass player via text message,…

Alice Beck’s girlfriend had started to forget things. Where she went and what she did. Who she called and what they said. “What do you mean you don’t remember?” Alice Beck would ask after she came home from work. Alice Beck would eat dinner and pepper her girlfriend with questions as if she were preparing…

I heard it was for the Royes next door, for their daughter’s wedding, possibly a nice little present from the girl’s brother who worked abroad, some construction job in Dubai, or loading trucks in Manila, that brown packet the slightly forgetful postman hurled across their fence gate though it was properly locked, and their puppy…

My uncle, Mario, was two people. During the day, he was Mario. Undisputed king of the dad joke. A middle-aged weirdo of minor repute. Think Tony Danza if Tony Danza were brown as fuck, installed drywall, and took minutes at the local Sasquatch sighting club. But at night, he was Yelton John, the leader of…

They know what’s coming when their dad slams the front door. Their eyes squint, they scatter. Their dad finds them, lines them up, and spanks them by the most hysterical to the most stoic. The loudest ones cry, “We didn’t do anything.” And he says the same thing, “This is for general principles.” Their dad…