Deleted Scenes

I’m storytelling on Sunday as part of America, Now and Here. My yarn is about being abroad and mouthing off. Because my time is so limited, I offer a few subplots that will, regretfully, be omitted: When I was visiting London, I picked up this child. I mean, I chatted up this guy, and it […]

The End of the World

As you may have heard, the world is ending on May 21. All the teachers, and all the students, are like, no way! Not before school’s out! The world will end on May 21. I believe that. The world ends every day. I was on the rooftop of a building downtown. They had a little […]

America: Now and Here

Where is America? Kansas City blushes and squirms at all the attention. We hesitate to answer anything, in our modesty, but they have asked: what is America? And the collective answer, woven from artists both local and far-flung, is as varied as America demands. The whole of the Leedy-Volkos gallery, and spaces across the street, […]

Giving and Having

I woke up this morning to death. I didn’t cheer it like those kids in DC. My cat had killed a mouse. I screamed, and then I laid a towel over the corpse. My great-grandfather used to say, “It’s not the dead people you need to worry about– it’s the living.” He was a mortician. […]