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Rooms

Fatima remembers the infant eyes closing against the first handfuls of dirt. She stopped moving almost immediately, as if the sheerest blanket of earth were too heavy.

My Earth Day

We were all terribly sorry we’d made the earth pay for our pleasure these last 200 years. We had a fear-taste in our mouths. Maybe the earth is preparing revenge. In comic books, an exposure to toxicity creates superpowered heroes, but in this world we are not so lucky.

Dear Michael

Kevin Murray, retired, one-time police chief of a small midwestern city, turned on his electric typewriter and began his third letter of the day. “Dear Abbie Hoffman, It says in the newspapers you killed yourself because you weren’t getting enough attention. Makes sense. More sense than most of what you said. . . .”

Three Audreys

Lil’ Audrey had heard that joke weeks before at school, but she didn’t think people, even her Daddy, should be telling jokes about the dead. Besides, she knew Octavia’s grandson, Skeeter, was one of Dr. King’s followers.

The Park This Week

“This must be the utmost high point in the history of Tompkins Square Park,” I told Jim Brodie, coming back from a poetry reading three weeks ago.

Enemies Of Freedom

Pornography Theme

A Matter Of Degree

It’s not the mere existence of pornography that troubles me. We’ve always had it. It’s the amount of it that’s the problem. Never before, to my knowledge, has the world had so very much printed and cinematic pornography. It will not go away by itself, so it cannot be ignored.

Thoughts On Censorship

What is true for a person, in other words, is not true for a republic; from our private life we can, like a dictator, ban anything which offends us; but in our life as a citizen in a democracy not only can we not ban from the public realm that which offends us, but for our own protection we must fight for its right to exist.

Words

The words pornography, obscenity, and erotica — and the emotions they evoke — create an endless debate which quickly twists into confusion when terms are vague and law is complex.