No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
Cynthia starts keeping her balcony sliding door open. She’d starts dressing more in her new clothes and doing her face even when she just plans on staying home. And when she hears Jane’s balcony door open, and starts to smell smoke, she more often than not manufactures casualness and goes out to see Jane. They catch up as much as anyone can in this time. Most of the time they’d just watch the quiet street in silence.
You see the surprise on your mother’s face that you’ve brought the white man home. Your mother is caught off-guard and becomes polite, not at all like with the others before.
I write a lot about women, about race and color. Now removed from the place of my birth, these are themes that gnaw at me, that nag, that haunt.
Mandy was seeing Jackson after work, so she’d be feasting on a lunch of cigarettes and Diet Coke. She’d already painted her toes bright pink and shaved everything the way he liked it. She just had to last another eighteen hours and then he’d be on his way back to Tampa and she could eat as many cheeseburgers as she wanted.
. When I was thirteen, I read "The Great Gatsby" for the first time. Even then, I had no interest in Nick or Daisy or Gatsby himself. I was so interested in the character of George Wilson who was “so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive” that I named my cat after him.
Being dead was the easy part. That part made sense. It was living that was complicated.