An excerpt: “Sensitivities bared, I made myself a lightning rod. For sunshine lost to cloud cover. For heat’s remove, cold creep of goosebumps on skinned knees. For wind around me. For leaves in the crabapple tree gone twitching, a receipt cartwheeling the street, quick-winged robin flight, the rose bush by the split-rail fence giving up…Read More

Find the full text of “Ossification,” winner of the 2015 Michael Steinberg Essay Prize, in Issue 18 of Fourth Genre. An excerpt: “On Saturday mornings, my mother used to wake us with the radio and the sound of the vacuum cleaner while my father started the lawnmower in the backyard; pollen drifted in the screens of my…Read More

An excerpt: “How to knit my care into textiles, sew it up in the stuffing? Here, for my family to hold: tangible proof of connections. And yet, I know now, mothers worry when their children play with proof. Gifts rendered too precious for use instead sit on nursery shelves, distant and out of touch. I…Read More