Creative Nonfiction
"The Making of a Gym Rat"
Slate
"And while my hubris grew, I tried to remain humble, kind, and empathetic to my clients, considering the goals
I’d had all my life and the advice I sought in those men I admired. On the exterior, my body changed, and from
a perspective other than my own, maybe I’d achieved the ideal physique; but internally, the war raged—the
insecurities raged like Jupiter’s red storm. My calves were still too skinny, my abdominals were still
underdeveloped, my V-shaped torso was more of a U. However much progress and improvement I made, my
life still seemed minuscule, as if the clay were still oddly shaped, still unformed. And always during warmups
before my boot-camp class started, I’d say to my clients what I could not to myself: Don’t compare yourself to
the person next to you, just be your best self. Focus on your workout."
"Fighting the Tree"
the Sun Magazine
"Feet shoulder-width apart, Dad wielded the chain saw like a weapon. Where earlier he’d spray-painted a
mark, he drove the blade into the tree. Splinters and sawdust billowed as if the tree were coughing out its
insides. Dad thrust the saw in farther, its roar unrelenting. Mom covered my ears, but I swatted at her hands. This is so cool, I told her. After a minute or so, Dad pulled out the saw. The tree had a jack-o’-lantern smile on
one side. He investigated, tilting his head back and forth. My father said something to him, and Dad
shrugged, then nodded."
"How I Learned to Embrace My Black and Jewish Heritage"
Los Angeles Times
"But through a string of personal encounters with family members and with history, I eventually came to think
that maybe my Black identity was connected to my Jewish identity, as I found common themes between our
peoples’ experiences. What seems to separate us — our skin, our culture, our history — is really what binds
the Black and Jewish people. We have defied persecution and slavery and genocide and systemic and
institutional racism and antisemitism, but we’re not defined by just our struggles. Our resolve, our irrefutable
drive for freedom and equality define us. As a kid, I didn’t understand any of that."
"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
"There was something about being a boy here. Being a boy here meant our farts could shake the trees, our
burps could scare the birds. Being a boy here meant only the blue parental-like sky watched over us. Being a
boy here meant we could take a punch, could give a punch. Being a boy meant we could roar profanities
without the fear of parents, without repercussions, just the echoes of whichever word that we would huck, like
spit, into the air, and how those words, like globs of mucus, came back down and how we weren’t afraid of
them falling back on us, how sometimes we’d catch them back into our mouths."
"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."
"The Making of a Gym Rat"
Slate
"And while my hubris grew, I tried to remain humble, kind, and empathetic to my clients, considering the goals
I’d had all my life and the advice I sought in those men I admired. On the exterior, my body changed, and from
a perspective other than my own, maybe I’d achieved the ideal physique; but internally, the war raged—the
insecurities raged like Jupiter’s red storm. My calves were still too skinny, my abdominals were still
underdeveloped, my V-shaped torso was more of a U. However much progress and improvement I made, my
life still seemed minuscule, as if the clay were still oddly shaped, still unformed. And always during warmups
before my boot-camp class started, I’d say to my clients what I could not to myself: Don’t compare yourself to
the person next to you, just be your best self. Focus on your workout."
"Fighting the Tree"
the Sun Magazine
"Feet shoulder-width apart, Dad wielded the chain saw like a weapon. Where earlier he’d spray-painted a
mark, he drove the blade into the tree. Splinters and sawdust billowed as if the tree were coughing out its
insides. Dad thrust the saw in farther, its roar unrelenting. Mom covered my ears, but I swatted at her hands. This is so cool, I told her. After a minute or so, Dad pulled out the saw. The tree had a jack-o’-lantern smile on
one side. He investigated, tilting his head back and forth. My father said something to him, and Dad
shrugged, then nodded."
"How I Learned to Embrace My Black and Jewish Heritage"
Los Angeles Times
"But through a string of personal encounters with family members and with history, I eventually came to think
that maybe my Black identity was connected to my Jewish identity, as I found common themes between our
peoples’ experiences. What seems to separate us — our skin, our culture, our history — is really what binds
the Black and Jewish people. We have defied persecution and slavery and genocide and systemic and
institutional racism and antisemitism, but we’re not defined by just our struggles. Our resolve, our irrefutable
drive for freedom and equality define us. As a kid, I didn’t understand any of that."
"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
"There was something about being a boy here. Being a boy here meant our farts could shake the trees, our
burps could scare the birds. Being a boy here meant only the blue parental-like sky watched over us. Being a
boy here meant we could take a punch, could give a punch. Being a boy meant we could roar profanities
without the fear of parents, without repercussions, just the echoes of whichever word that we would huck, like
spit, into the air, and how those words, like globs of mucus, came back down and how we weren’t afraid of
them falling back on us, how sometimes we’d catch them back into our mouths."
"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."
