No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. Celebrating Diversity Since 2015
Maria saw the bean pods hanging from the lone tree and felt the rough texture of loose fibers tightening around her throat. She coughed. The image of young men swinging from the further pines haunted her view; young black men floating in starched suits, some with rope and others with barbed wire set alight like hanging torches.
I love the beginning of James Agee’s A Death in the Family. It was right around the time I had heard (from where I can’t remember) that good writing uses almost no adverbs or adjectives, and here this guy was describing his corner of Knoxville as “fairly solidly lower middle class.”