The Bone Folder | Writing

Selected Writings of a Non-Pubished Entity

This page is the primary reason why this site exists: to share my writing. I may write a longer essay about my history as a writer and how my thoughts about, and my relationship to, writing are changing. Suffice it to say for the moment that I am deliberately creating a Small Web/Indie Web place to store my writing because I want to share it. I've been holding on to a lot of pieces for a long time because I've been afraid that they won't get published if I make them live online. (I know that there are some literary journals that will not publish something if you've posted it to a personal blog, for instance.) By making this space, I relinquish that fear. If they never get published, so what? My goal is to keep on writing, and if my writing can make a difference for even one person, it will be because I put it online for free instead of kept it as a private file, shopping it around to magazines in hopes that it will get picked up.

This is not the first time that I have deliberately turned away from a gatekeeping institution. I finished my PhD in English literature and did not publish anything or apply for any jobs. [If I can find a good file of my dissertation, I may post it here for fun.] I knew about a year before I finished that an academic career was not for me, and I don't regret that decision. I look similarly upon the world of publishing now. Maybe I will publish a book one day—that would be great. But for now my job is simply to write and put that writing where others can see it.

Every piece linked on this page is subject to change. I am inclined to futz silently with poems, but may add notes to prose pieces indicating that changes have been made.

I hope you enjoy these pieces. They are for you.

Essays

These are more finished/polished pieces. They contain a complete thought from beginning to end.

⬈ Adjusts Itself to Midnight

A long-format, mixed-genre piece about queer heartbreak, love, and growth in the aftermath of being ghosted.

On Picky Eating

A personal essay on the freedoms and foibles of choosing one's food.

But for Caesar, he excused himself before God

An essay about the Israel-Hamas war and the long shadows of human violence.

Hitting Return

On my return to writing and my resistance to how modern software has flattened this necessarily multi-part process into school reports and business letters.

Poetry

Who Could Be Hurt at This Hour? I Am a Giant Deep Sea Isopod George Fawn Un-titled Coshocton Tribune Before ("The cares of clans and bonds...") What the Women Grew Before (What was there...) Arrival Forwarding Small Returns Meadow: Womb Spell Reversible Self-Heal Goldenrods August Deep Time Subject Lines Before (I call you...) Tide Pool Mammal

Spare Words

These are more sketchy notes of ideas that I maybe want to develop later, or just leave as they are.

Rough Notes on Writing

Thoughts on what I'm learning as I return to a sustained writing habit.