Sholom Brodt Was Not a Tzaddik
When wine goes in, the secrets come out. In A Shtikel Sholom, a new memoir of stories about his teacher and mine, Sholom Brodt, Barak Hullman writes about a drunken Simchas Torah they spent...
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A Rebel Poet Wrestles with His Rebel Kids
Poetry is so hard to understand. It’s like a dream, but not a full dream dream, more like a vivid half-waking experience with people who you aren’t sure if they’re real or not, standing in places that...
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Stubby Teeth: a new short story
My story Stubby Teeth was just published in Barzakh Magazine. I'm honored to be in its pages.So the story is a response to something myprofessor Josh Henkin told our class when I was a cocky...
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The Rebbe in the Basement
The Rebbe in the BasementNew York, Upper East Side: “Are you here to see the Rebbe?” someone asks, a guy I haven’t seen in maybe a decade, shouting over five or six heads in the two or three feet of...
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How to Offend the Jews
Gotta tell you, most of my posts on Hevria don't get much mileage in terms of feedback -- that's mostly for Elad and his political ilk (politilk?) -- but this was the exception. Posted this and, the...
View ArticleMy Slow-burning Obsession with Steven Mnuchin
This is a weird one. Sometimes I'll start thinking about Steven Mnuchin and get so mad. Other times he just seems like a paradigm of all that is weird about the Trump administration -- not wrong...
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G-d's Little Obstacle Course
I wrote this poem a while ago, but wasn't really sure what to do with it. One of those things that seemed too cheesy to non-religious people and too heretical to religious people. But necessity is the...
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A bissel Shtisel for your morning
I have a new poem on Hevria and I hope you like it. Without overtly intending to, it covers my 3 big themes: the human relationship with the Divine, imposter syndrome, and public transportation.In the...
View ArticleAll hail Zuby Nehty, guardians of Weird Music forever 🤘
Today I wrote about the odyssey of the second (and first) times I saw Zuby Nehty, one of my favorite bands. In the story, I describe them as "Operation Ivy meets They Might Be Giants," which I realize...
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Sweater Dog
This is Madcap Review #10, and herewith are two poems of mine that are published therein.Sweater Dog Brings Himself JoyThe happiest tiny dogis kicking up dirt in his sweaterHis paws don’t scratch much...
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It's a Whole Spiel launch party!
Hey! My story "Find the River" is about to be published in the collection It's a Whole Spiel, alongside luminaries like Alex London and David Levithan and Mayim Bialik. Hopefully I'll be able to share...
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The Beauty of Being Disappointing
Last night we were one week and five days into the seven-week, seven-day cycle of counting the omer, our contemporary verbal gesture toward the ancient pentecostal offering of a sheaf of ripe grain...
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There Is Always a Graffiti Maker
This is part of a story I've been writing for, yikes, way longer than it should have taken me. If you want, you can read from the beginning, or just start here.< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >In Flagstaff we...
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Monument Valley, a poem
Tonight I just wanted to sleep aloneeach touch of skin and furtive blanket movementnails across the blackboard of my sleep.Sometimes I pray because I don’t know what else to dothen drive myself crazy...
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Sympathy Pains for the Speaker’s Stand
I wrote a new poem! Go here to read the whole thing. Usually I write (well, usually I try to write) on paper, because I take more time with each word, the physical effort of it. Today I had too much to...
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The Friend I Never Called
I steal names. You should know this, first of all, if you want to be friends with me (or friends of friends, or one-night drinking buddies, or if you just wanna ask me about my weird hair). If you...
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Write On!: But How Do You Make a Plot?
Hey, welcome back to the writing space. If you have writing questions, send them to me! It’s just my first name at gmail.First lesson today: Always show up. I wrote 700 words of a different story,...
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My new chapbook!
So I wrote a bunch of poems and bound them together, and the collage artist Katie Skau cut up some images for them, and Ghost City Press crumpled the whole dang mess together and threw it into a book...
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Write On!: How to Write for Yourself
Every blade of grass has a story to tell— Darshan, “Animate My Anatomy”Hey! I'm just taking some questions from the ol' email inbox. Ready? Set? To corrupt Montell Jordan, this is how we go.How do you...
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Write On!: Sometimes I’m Too Jewish, Sometimes I’m Not Jewish Enough
I want to believe that I’m the sum of all my experiences, that every time I pick up a pen and launch into a story I’m giving it everything that I have —the books I’ve read and the movie I watched on...
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Saturday Night with the Reverend
“G-d needs us to believe in Him,” Rev. Vince extols us, “just like you need someone to believe in you.”Just as the music drops in, he one-ups himself: “Just like I need you to believe in me,” and on...
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Praying in Strange Places, a new story
My short story "Praying in Strange Places" was published in Derailleur! Here's how it starts. I know, it starts with Chapter 5 and goes down to 1. Not consciously trying to be weird, just came out of...
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A Halloween present for you
Art: from the prompt "your uncle wearing a creepy hat" on CraiyonSo, I'm up to something, maybe? I've been writing horror stories -- well, I think they're horror stories -- and I've been a little bit...
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My favorite music (and my favorite magic), 2022 edition
Every year, my faithful sometimes-editor David Levithan conducts his David Music Poll, and every year I faithfully respond. Here are my picks for this year (and here are everyone's). Spoiler: Orville...
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The Giraffe who was Made of Cheese
I illustrated a chapter in The Rolling Eating Face and Other Stories, a new picture book by Effie Ross. I'm really honored to have been asked, and also really pleased with the way my pictures turned...
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