To Be Determined: 
Journalism, Marketing, Poetry, Society, and Other Inanities 

Pacific Starfish | On the middle day we saw them, As if we had to be evenly distant from everything made by man—both approaching and...

The Next Day Opened Curious Windows The morning after she dismantles us, we walk the chilled shadows that sweep last night from her cobblestone streets. I’m uprooted, raw, a potted plant she elbowed off her balcony. At the diner counter, we eat our breakfasts like a couple of mutes. She repeats what she said last night, after whiskey let her pity undress us a final time. Why not make the best of a terrible situation? Her kind tone aligns with her eyes again, making me long fo

First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, waiting too, Earth's immeasurable surprise. They could not grasp it if they knew, What so soon will wake and grow Utterly unlike the snow. On first reading, I found Lar

It's funny what becomes "clear" to us as we age. I was a good student, and I love learning, but I see now that hated school. I was an A-/B+ student mostly out of sheer will, and there were certainly subjects I cared little for (math-related subjects, mostly). Ironic then that I found myself teaching at the start of my professional life. I dove into the career because I had found myself in love with school again at the end of my time in the system: I ended my life as a student

I wake earlier and earlier these days, a habit perhaps popularly attributed to the elderly, but I'm not, I tell myself, that old. 37 as of this September. I've been taking longer and longer breaks from the drink (an editorial in my paper Life on Capitol Hill, soon to be reposted here, will mine this subject), and I find myself with more energy... I also find my mind racing. It does that, and has for as long as I can remember. Maybe that's why I drink/drank. I'm a person who's