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Alcoholism
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“I’m going to do you to death,” he said. “How about that. Not because you’re pretty, either, because you’re not, but because you can’t stop me. How about that.”
January 1990Serpent’s Tooth
We lived in a walk-up apartment house. The three of us would anticipate his footsteps, listening for them up the tiled stairs and across the tiled floor. He had a variety of walks: a confident, sober stride; a penitential limp; a self-assured, rocking swagger.
October 1989Radical Steps
Both of them hit me so frequently that I still flinch at sudden movements. I learned in my bones that alcoholics don’t have relationships; they take hostages.
August 1989A Little Irish Water Music
Occasionally, when Dad belted up his trousers with twine, she turned as brittle as snapbread, but in those early years, she was usually willing to dismiss our days as the pruning from which decorous bloom must one day erupt.
March 1988Saying Goodbye To Warren
He was the only friend I had who would dive on the hood of a car. What does that mean? Look around you and you will see it meant a lot.
October 1982We Are People
Interviews With Inmates Of Hillsborough Prison
The day I sat in the courtroom, there were three or four white men with the same charges, but they let them pay out, maybe seven or eight hundred dollars. I was black. The man didn’t say nothing about no fees or charges. They gave me the maximum sentence. My skin color gave me away. I can base it down to that. I didn’t have the money, so I got to pull the time. It’s just as simple as that.
September 1980Chapel Hill
An Elegy For Jesse Stroud
There is no precipitating event for this elegy. No anniversary. No birthday. No cause whatever, other than personal need. Jesse Stroud lived, struggled, and died. I do not purposefully vilify nor vindicate. Neither do I celebrate. Certainly not regret.
April 1980
