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A Short History Of Part Of North Carolina

With Some Names Changed To Protect The Innocent, The Guilty, & The Dead

They had locked chains around Lester’s skinny ankles. The faded blue prison shirt and pants fitted poorly on Lester’s five-eight body, all of a hundred pounds. “Lester won’t come out,” Bambi said. She was right. Lester hanged himself in his cell within the year.

Off The Road

Studying astronomy, as a child, I was fascinated by the Earth’s movement, its rotation on its axis, its orbit around the sun, its sweep, with the rest of the galaxy, through space. Despite the evidence of my senses, nothing stood still. 

Lou, Turn Up Your Hearing Aid

Birth and death is a continual cycle. Like corn, you have a season. You grow, flower, give seed, fade away. But the energy within you keeps going — like the energy of corn. Have you ever been in a corn field and felt that energy?

When A Home Is Not A House, Or, News From Swamis Local 486

I was born and brought up in a cave. This was in a former life, of course. I remember to this day lying there in a dent in our kitchen wall, only hours after I was born, watching my dad throw stones at the wolves outside.

Spinach Wilts

It was The New Age and there I was on the elevator — 68th floor, 15th floor, 43rd floor — thinking: bongs will never totally replace joints. Bongs have their place, sure, a big place. But a joint is a . . .

Most Of All, I Remember Steeplechase

First he insults me, tells me I’m not a human being. Well, I tell him — this frog, this polka-dotted frog — that I just can’t control myself in the face of spaghetti.

Grandmother

The sky and trees, reflected once in the creek, are reflected again in my thoughts. These are not the black trees written on a light gray sky that small black words bring to mind. But, green and living, they stretch to grasp the sun, lobsterlike in living claws.

Woeful Cowboy

I was working with Allen yesterday afternoon when Anne came to door & said to Allen “Ed Wall’s here to see you” — “I didn’t make any appointments” Allen explained to me as he got up.

No More Sheiks

“No more sheiks in this desert, man.” The dark-skinned, bearded one laughed half-heartedly through a mouthful of smiling teeth. “Not one of them bastards left now. Toke?”

The Marriage

Summer in College Town. At 7:30 a.m. eating a bagel with cream cheese at Out To Lunch they discuss getting married. At 5:30 p.m. the same day they are in a lawyer’s office in Raleigh writing their marriage contract.