poetry, journalism, essays, fiction, and other nonsense by chez oxendine

Latest Posts


  • lucid.

    It’s a foggy morning; mist wreathes the dead trees around him, clinging to the forest floor. He can taste the wintry chill in the air as he wanders down the trail, hands in his pockets. Acoustic guitar music, slow and… Continue reading

    lucid.
  • the end of the end.

    The professor flipped the switch and saved the world. Continue reading

    the end of the end.
  • last shift.

    WARD 9, the sign above the door reads. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Continue reading

    last shift.
  • the featherless indian.

    My first Lumbee-adjacent assignment during my early days at my current gig — staff writer at Tribal Business News — turns out to be an entrepreneur profile on Moore Brothers’ Beef, a North-Carolina-based cattle outfit built on the remains of… Continue reading

    the featherless indian.
  • on what it costs.

    Every so often I go back and check on her — to find out whether anything new has come up. She’s a bright smile in one photograph, a playful sneer in another. Her friends miss her, they tell me. They… Continue reading

    on what it costs.
  • angry.

    I have one summer memory I always come back to, whenever June rolls in. It was 2007. (God, that was 16 years ago.) I went with some friends down to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. It was a pretty impromptu… Continue reading

    angry.