No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
I’m looking for him. Even among the crowds he was taller than almost everyone else. I would look for his smile, his encouragement. But today I won’t see him. I won’t hear him scream “Run, Anna, run!” while he waves his arms above the rest of the crowd so that I can’t miss him.
Rita Zumpano was the topic of neighborhood gossip, a widow who’d gotten over the death of her husband a decade ago, a woman who lit no candles at church, who favored floral patterns over black, who took tango lessons at the community center.
Jacee worked at the Waffle House on I-95 in Haswick, Georgia going on five years. She’d started the day after graduating high school when her mother told her to get a job or “move on.”
As if to remind you that, regardless of what they say, you yourself are an island. Nothing but the grass grows there.
Sonny, face deadpan, flings his ballpoint across the reflective marble of the conference table. It flies with unintended precision, hitting his older sister Maya in the center of her chest like a dart. A tentative smile twitches across her face, because he’s fifty-six and he’s never been good at anger, never had reason to be. The pen was the best he could manage.
The first time I saw Lucille after she died, she told me, “You better find someone new, Harlan, or you’ll be lonely.”