DAVON LOEB
  • Home
  • About
  • The In-Betweens, a Lyrical Memoir
  • Anthologies
  • Selected Works
  • Contact
Creative Nonfiction 

"How I Learned to Embrace My Black and Jewish Heritage"
The Los Angeles Times


"Glazer Ball, Gym Class, a Locker Room, and a Bathroom"
Joyland Magazine

 "I was an Other, like the Native American man, whom we often called Geronimo or Squanto or some other 
  name that we thought   sounded Native American. In the locker room positioned above all the lockers, his
  caramel-colored face looked on, as if some last   attempt by an administrator to watch us, and he watched
​  us, omnisciently, like he was saying—I know what you do in here. I know how you treat each other. I know
  you are not brothers. If a real man, he was uncommon as I was, for I was the only kid of color and   what my
  classmates knew about kids or people of color, for that matter, was as much and as little as they knew about
  Native Americans—that we, both Black and brown, were just a thing they’d recognize from a History book,
  from a television—or from the   occasional other kid of color who also went through our school, whose name
  they had forgotten by now but remembered only that —he was a damn good athlete." 

"Most N.J. Teachers Don’t Look like Their Students. Here’s How to Fix That"
The Philadelphia Inquirer

 "I come from a rural town in New Jersey where we rode bikes, fished in ponds, hiked, camped, and where I
  was one of the only students of color. The school I loved was filled with people who hurt me: students who
  brought Confederate flags to football games, a kid who called me the N-word, the teachers who stereotyped
  me. What if the school I loved also had people who grew 
up like me and understood me? What iif we, our
​  community, had teachers of color?"


"Breakdancing Shaped Who I Am As a Black Man and Father"
Catapult Magazine and featured in the anthology, The Best American Essays 2022, "Notable Essays of 2021"

 "I was cool if I could fit popular tropes, like the athletes in my town who ran fast, slam-dunked, and scored
  touchdowns. If you could 
be categorized, stereotyped, people felt safe. I decided that hip-hop and
  breakdancing was the part of Black culture I’d celebrate. I 
wanted to learn it all, from breakbeats from a
  boombox and Kangol hats and Adidas. I wanted to absorb it, for it to become me. But
in this rural town, down
  these streets, sometimes paved and sometimes dirt, were lifted trucks barreling by with loud exhaust

  pipes, Confederate flags, banjo-and-beer blues, flannel, and hunting camo—everything that felt un-Black." ​

"On the Confederate Flag"
Ploughshares Blog
 "The truck bed is rusted, exposing the primer. Still visible, though the paint is chipped, is the red, white, and
  blue star-crossed 
Confederate flag glorified on the tailgate. There’s a bumper sticker underneath; I speed up
  to read it. “Heritage not Hate.” I stay on 
the truck, pressing the gas, almost tapping the hitch—wanting to 
  touch it. I recognize this rage. I’ve felt it before; it hollows me out, 
like being struck in the gut. But the air
  doesn’t escape; it stagnates, and buries deep inside of me. This rage, it fills my lungs—sharp 
angry breaths,
  the kind of breathing in flight or fight. I want to fight. I want to hurt something."


"When Steve Urkel Played Soccer"
​CRAFT Literary
 
"For I squinted the last drops of sweat and hid my face in my shirt, pretending to dry it off. Some kid, his voice    reaching higher than all of them, said I looked just like Steve Urkel—he has the same glasses…annoying
  voice…he’s Black too. Did I do that—the kids 
agreed with the mockery. And the hurt I felt—punched my gut, 
  that caved me in, that kneeled me over. And in that grass and dirt 
stained shirt, sometime after the final 
  whistle blew, and mini-vans started to arrive, and the grass was dried, and our bodies cooled, 
and those kids
  carried on—did I do that—like I was some kind of dirty joke—and in my shirt covering my face, I broke in half,
  and I 
cried, and I couldn’t stop."

"A Small Lesson on Loitering"
PANK Magazine

 "And it is summer now, and the cicadas and crickets are singing, There’s a break in the blinds and the moon
  slides in. I’m sitting at 
the table with my mom, and my friends are waiting, and I’m wondering if it was night like
  this—if my grandmother’s uncle was just 
like me; so I imagine him: his black skin in a bright yellow open-
  collared shirt, showing his chest, and his pants might have been 
rolled up, his ankles bare in brown oxfords; I
  imagine him singing a song from the radio, and he sounds like Nat King Cole. His hair is 
parted, and he smells
  like sandalwood. He sees friends at their homes, on their porches, and calls out their names, smiles
  and 
strolls on. He can hear the cicadas and crickets too, but they sound different in Alabama. He’s happy, and
  plans to join the army 
soon, just after he makes his girl his girlfriend. And in between the chorus and verse, a
  police car spotlights him."


Fiction

"Three-Finger Freddie and a Fight"
The Rumpus

" The Boys might have been a yard away, but Chris moved faster than The Boys had ever seen him move.
  Running headfirst, the rest 
of him trying to catch up. Chris was yelling something that wasn’t an actual word.
  Before they knew it, Chris was on top of Freddie--
his hands open, closed—knuckles, nails, anything. Freddie
  was swatting as if being attacked by bees. Freddie tried to say stop but 
his mouth was muffled by the
  hammering of a fist, a pop, like a ball suddenly deflated, and blood. It was all ugly, the way Chris’s
  
body moved—full of a wild rage that he didn’t even understand. It took over him, guiding his strikes, as if
  saying,
hit here, that’s where it’ll hurt. Another to the mouth, and this time, the bracket of Freddie’s braces tore
  the inside of his lip. Chris’s hands were wet 
and hot, pumping like pistons."

"No Hands"
Midnight Breakfast Magazine
 
"They made it to the willow. Their tires treaded over the X. They stopped at an intersection outside of
  Winooska Woods where cars 
drove by infrequently. The sun was shrinking, and the sky was changing
  orange, and red, then violet. While waiting for the cars to 
pass, the boys idled, resting, kneading their thighs,
  rubbing the knots out. Then they crossed, each boy looking both ways like their 
parents taught them so long
  ago. Eventually, each boy took one hand off the handlebars, threw up a two-finger peace sign, and
  
split from the pack. Turning onto different streets into different neighborhoods."

"The Ruins" 
The Offing


"The Boys in the High-Top Converses" 
Pleiades​ Magazine
"But what happened here was like any other day, an autumn day, when we got out of school at three and did
  what we always did and 
arrived home from the bus stop and rushed inside and threw our bookbags in the
  mud room and grabbed our favorites snacks and, 
before leaving, told our moms and dads and grandparents
  and whatever might have been home that we’d be back before dark, and our whoever was home would say
  to return before the street light turned on, and we agreed and left the way we came, back out of the mouths
  of our garages, and we walked our bikes and got on our bikes and then rode our bikes—pumping our
​  adolescent legs with jubilation—with ease, with an ordinariness."


"A Middle Finger Flipped on a School Bus"
Pithead Chapel and Fractured Lit Reprint Prize, 3rd Place 

 "But if you don’t remember what it was like, these moments on a school bus, try to use your senses, try to
  remember how the 
unguarded sweat smells like a mildew or the ever-present release of gas, some silent       
  and some just deadly. Recite the sounds of 
an orchestra of do re mi belches. Hear the language, to not only 
  describe childhood, but to decipher it: spaz, dork, dweeb, loser, 
nerd—the tongues after Babel. And if you
  remember that, reach your hand under a seat and touch the collection of gum wads. 
Remember the pang of
  being struck in the head by a swinging seat belt buckle. Listen close to those kids who always sat in
  the 
back, how much fun they seemed to be having, how they jammed four-packed in three-seaters. Visualize
  the faces they made at 
passing drivers—how long their tongues could snake, how far back their eyes could
  roll, how their naked skin pressed like a 
squeegee to the glass."


Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
  • The In-Betweens, a Lyrical Memoir
  • Anthologies
  • Selected Works
  • Contact