The Welcome Wagon’s Vito and Monique Aiuto released their first album, Welcome to the Welcome Wagon in 2008. The homespun effort was produced by Sufjan Stevens and was lauded by outlets as diverse as Pitchfork Magazine (the ultimate indie bible) and Christianity Today. Known for their endearing, lush, and earnest combination of indie-folk hymns, low-fi…

Yesterday, a man might have killed me. Both receptionists were away from the counter when I entered the waiting room for a physical therapy appointment. The waiting room, shared by several different offices, was lonely in mid-morning with only one man wearing all black and headphones sitting slightly hunched. I took a seat as far…

And should you glimpse my wandering form out on the borderline Between death and resurrection and the council of the pines Do not worry for my comfort, do not sorrow for me so All your diamond tears will rise up and adorn the sky beside me when I go —“When I go,” lyrics by Dave…

I eat a pretzel in the presence of my enemies. (They have assembled in Charlottesville.) To be a man of men, I sip my whiskey neat in the presence of my enemies. (They march on the nightly news.) I present my failed masterpiece in the presence of my enemies. (The other painters in the juried…

I love poems that stitch together memories from opposite ends of a lifetime, connecting them to our collective story in surprising ways. This poem feels dreamlike in its skill at just this kind of stitchwork. How simple Stelmach makes it look: take a phrase from poetry (commonly, arbitrarily) held as the most beautiful, and test…

I met a little boy new to the neighborhood this evening when I was pulling weeds in my yard. “Why are you in the dirt?” he asked, trundling to where I crouched. “I’m pulling weeds.” “Why?” “So that there’s there more room for the flowers.” “Why?” “Because I like the flowers.” “Why?” “Because they’re pretty.”…

When a former MFA professor asked me to come to her class and speak on revision, I immediately said yes. Not only was she a writer and an academic that I respected, there had been an ongoing, semi-inside, joke between me and some of my MFA cohort members about my desire to be acknowledged by…

This month I thought it would be a good idea to take four hours of Arabic every week and an intensive JavaScript course all while working full-time. I was nervous about the Arabic, scared that I wouldn’t remember how to read or speak politely after three years away from formal lessons, but strangely, it came…

It occurs to me each time I listen to Kendrick Lamar’s new album, Damn: The award winning and much celebrated rapper laments over and over that he feels like nobody’s praying for him. It’s his greatest fear. I’m not sure you can listen casually to a Lamar album. Each song demands attention to every word.…

It was the summer of Leiby Kletzy, the eight-year-old Hasidic boy kidnapped from his Brooklyn neighborhood in broad daylight and brutally murdered. It was also the summer I almost lost my seven-year-old daughter Camille on a Toronto subway platform. When I turned, from inside the train, to see my daughter—outside, standing alone—my feet became bricks…