Articles & Short Stories

Geographic Determinism & The Russo-Japanese War

Jan - Feb 2018

Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov became the last tsar of Imperial Russia in 1896.  His vast empire encompassed many provinces, countries, and regions, yet territorial expansion was on his mind in the early 1900s.  Russia’s ability to act, however, was crippled by her geography.

     Though Russia had long oceanic borders, she could not be considered a maritime state.  None of her bordering seas were ice-free more than a few months each year, rendering them useless as a means of transportation.  The deep-seated desire for an ice-free port was at the core of the drive to expand, and specifically of geo-political maneuvering that led to the Russo-Japanese War.

The Thin Veil                                (Non-Fiction Short Story)

October 2018

I have heard it said that Cabazon is a place of demons. It’s true that when I lived there as a child, I could feel eyes on me while I played imaginative games in the trees as night approached. But being a child, I thought it was normal to feel this way. Years later, I know better. Eyes don’t watch from the blackness. Not everywhere. Only there. Is this proof, then? No—yet it presents a faint ripple in my consciousness, an uncertainty about the exact nature of things.
A place full of demons attracts many churches, and I had lived in one of those churches. Understandably, the church, itself, was full of demons. My brother—older than me and now a bipolar, schizophrenic alcoholic—both ..

 Derailed                               (Fiction Short Story - Honorable Mention)

November 2018

Black girl, black girl, nigger-in-the-woodpile.

        That aint me, sir. No sir, that aint me.

       You say, “sir,” girl, and that says it’s you.

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             You say sir girl, you say sir girl… The words slithered around in Lulu-girl’s head, until they dripped onto the page, soot-black, and flat as maps. The words were thinner and flatter than the vision she had in her mind, but she could almost see the curves rising around them; the un-hollowing; the arc of meaning. If only she could coax them up.

Lulu dropped her pencil down next to her on the tiny bed. What was the point of even trying? She drew her long legs up against her body and wrapped her arms around them. Tight, and closed, and ...