Since the end of the Cambodian Civil War in 1975, and the horrific killing fields following the next four years, Cambodia has never recovered.

There’s a phrase for it, the way / I’m lately loving like a river / is pressed to my door

Like all nights, this one was muggy and black. It will rain tonight, he thought as he rubbed his arthritic knee. Maybe.

my hair sways long / black streams cascade / down my back / somewhere, skies illuminate after somber rain

Many of the “Indians” — that’s what they call themselves and what we call them too — in our small Alaskan town live in a separate community called Saxman.

It is unseemly to blow your nose into a tablecloth. If you share a / bed with another man, keep still. If you pass a person pissing, do /not greet him.

Out past the bridge, past the edge of town where the old houses give way to the stretch of firs that continues for a few miles before dissolving into shrubland, there is a little church

The topic of “real” American identity and assimilation has never been so simultaneously divisive and uniting.

It came from a catalogue. I opened / the plastic bag inside the plastic bag / and out tumbled fabric fine as flesh.

Beyond dead. Torsos glazed with epoxy, exuding an icy sheen. A spinal column exposed, its flimsy cord dangling from a robust sacrum.

Mama was born in the year of the Dog. In the Chinese Zodiac, dogs are known to be loyal and stubborn, of which she was both, but mostly I thought of her as brave.

The chalk taste of prescription pill / washed down / with too-sweet lemonade. I only take it / because you do, and I wonder / if you get high so you can tolerate me.

How can we learn from moments of failing so that our anger, grief, and shame can propel us toward conversations and healing?

When a group of Alaskan women flew to Washington, D.C. to meet with Senator Lisa Murkowski during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, I wanted to be on the plane with them.

It’s much easier to vilify people than it is to see that they could have both dark and light in them, but is there a point at which giving others the benefit of the doubt does more harm than good?