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Adolescence
Evangel
I stood up and reeled. Blood washed from my brain. My vision began to shrink, and the people in the room seemed separated from me by some fold in the air.
February 1993Attics
Ninety clear glass marbles, a suicide note, a deathbed confession
February 1993Listening To My Father
He sat in there re-reading his Marx and Engels, cocooned in a shell, seemingly at peace. Then came the symptoms: a problem holding his knife and fork; a slight slur of speech. The diagnosis was Lou Gehrig’s disease. His life was ending soon.
October 1992Water
A new lifeguard, a poinsettia-plant-watering mystery woman, a big sister at the birth of her brother
October 1992Talk
My father brought Jake’s body home from Colorado in a record-breaking blizzard.
September 1992What Marvin Knows
Marvin had been watching the car, a red Ford Escort, drive by his house for perhaps twenty minutes. It was driven by a young fellow, probably one of the local college students.
February 1992Lady Con
Even with two thick coverlets over the blankets, her pelvic bone pressed like a wooden hanger against my cheek; I was sure it would leave a red mark. She had been eating for nearly two weeks now. How thin could she have been when she was first released?
September 1991Abortion
Secret codes, an underground network of doctors, complications
September 1991A Kind Of Power
Then, a mist drifted up in front of my eyes. It started gray. It began to burn, to get redder and redder and the words I heard rolling from my lips were like the words my grandpa knew. They were holy words, words of the old prophets. Wanton. Strumpet. Whore. Sister of the serpent, angel of evil, Satan’s bitch, vessel of filth, pestilence of desire, demoness eater of the soul.
July 1991
