“Peas””It’s a little past noon and church let out half an hour ago, the second service. The eight o’clock service is a little too early for fire and brimstone or the exaggerations of Revelations. That’s what Dad says, even though he didn’t come for the late service either. He hasn’t come with me and Mom…
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“Dats right, genius,” muttered Jeckles, flicking his cigar ash onto the gravel. “We iz a dyin breed, we iz.” From the lawn chair beside his Winnebago, Jeckles eyed the bloody sun slipping down into the thin pines ringing the fairground lot. A red-and-white greasepaint target stretched across his sagging jowls. From his Yankees cap,…
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A ray of sun strikes the copper’s badge and bounces off, lighting up the voting box inside H. L. Drugstore in me South Bronx neighborhood. Now washed and mended, I wear the same once-blood-splattered and mud-stained dress, patched at the cuff, tattered ‘round the collar. It shows the scars from when we marched down…
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1. When Beth was little, she dressed up as a princess and sang songs out of her bedroom window. The songs were all top forty hits; she never picked a song that was unpopular. Beth took breaks only to eat. When I walked the dog, the neighbors complimented my sister on her talents. She’s so…
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The sun was bright as Adrianne stepped out of her house and settled the large black hat on her head. The well-worn, floppy brim had been trained to fold just so in order to perfectly keep the sun from her eyes without impeding her vision. It provided the well needed relief for her to see…
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I am four-years-old. Sitting on the edge of the porcelain tub while my mother paints on her cat-eyes. It is not enough to watch her in the reflection of the tri-fold mirror. I want her to face me, to feel her arms around me, to squeeze me until bedtime. Instead, she sprays her sweeping up-do…
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“George Murata found some pearls here in the lake,” said Otis. He burst into the bar where I was resting drinking a beer after a long day working on a gasser at Caddo Lake. “Who the hell is George Murata?” I drawled. I looked at Otis, his face was black with oil…
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She wears a fur coat when the thermostat reads ninety, yet she can’t seem to stop herself from running through the dandelion littered grass. She runs through the field with the carefree indifference of the children who trotted here months prior, causing the white globes of seedlings to explode and scatter in the stagnant air.…
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At first, I thought my apartment was being robbed. I got home from work, rode the elevator up to the fifth floor of my apartment building, and walked down the hall. Usually, by this point, I would hear my cocker spaniel, Jerry, panting and pawing behind the door, eager to prove her love. Instead, I…
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