Browse Topics
The Internet
Clickbait Elegy
Brother Sends Mysterious Text (And Woman’s Life Changes Overnight) / How To Drink Your Way Through The First Few Days Of Mourning / Looking For Last-Minute Airfare Deals From Las Vegas To Cleveland?
October 2018#WeAreHarryChang
As the train slows down approaching Sunnyside, I look out the window for the spot where Harry jumped to his death. It’s marked by a tree still pinned with a few tattered ribbons and plastic flowers in Harry’s honor. “You fat fuck,” I whisper. “Who am I supposed to jam with now?”
September 2016
Order. Now.
There are five essential sweaters I need this season, and one must-have denim that’s guaranteed to flatter every body style, even mine. There are eleven things I could throw away today to reduce clutter immediately and start living my life more freely. Why am I waiting? There are only three more hours to purchase buy-one-get-two-free candles that provide over 150 hours of burn time.
March 2016
The Inevitable
Lacey, my tall, blond, newly Christian thirteen-year-old, believes that anything that happens to me will end up on the Internet and will embarrass her in front of the entire planet. “It’s inevitable,” she says every time she uncovers a maternal infraction on the Web.
December 2015
On His Ninety-Fifth Birthday, I Find My Dead Father On The Internet
I can still picture the room where he set up his ham radio. / Homemade furniture. Threadbare rug. A small space heater.
June 2015Wanderlust
We typed slowly and carefully: RussianBride.com. UkranianDelight.com. YourRussianLove.com. And, just like that, there we were — or, at least, versions of ourselves: women of eighteen, twenty-two, thirty-one who looked like us and wanted what we wanted. We sat before this machine — one part oracle, one part mirror — enchanted by the possibilities and all wishing the exact same wish.
June 2014
God In The Machine
Introducing The Sun’s Digital Edition
“We have taken the same care in building the online edition that we do in crafting each issue, and if we are unfashionably late to the digital party, I don’t think Sy minds very much.”
April 2013The Things They Googled
The things they googled were determined by forgetfulness, by need, by desire, by curiosity, and by the endless availability of information. In fact, there was no point in remembering anything except how to google.
August 2012
E-mail Elegy
Dedicated to e-mails from Save Darfur, War Child, Africa Action, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Free the Slaves, AIDS Action, and Doctors Without Borders. | How quietly they land, / bits of global sorrow accumulating like snowfall / as I teach a class, attend a meeting, / make a cup of tea.
August 2012
