Stories tagged childhood

Hip Hop

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Kenya Williams, eight years old, was out of bed before anyone else in her family, even Grandpa. It was Easter Sunday. She had a mission of mercy to carry out. She dressed quietly and tiptoed past her mama’s bedroom. She dared not wake her new daddy, who w

Momma and Me

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On Saturdays, we pull out big white poster boards, magic markers, and draw babies.

No Rocks On This End

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Take a flying leap?Mother would never agreeSo away from the campground we sneakTo show the boy where I was a boySummer day shirtless with swimsuits onOne hundred degrees walking through the treesThe season early with winter runoffWater here still seventy feet deepHoping the…

Hector's Record Collection

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Zappa, Santana, Hendrix.

Unclean

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The first time Momma shows me a demon is during revival week at church.

The End of the World

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I find driftwood, long, smooth logs washed up on the beach, drag them to dunes still wet from the sea...

Nothing

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I dream about the boy in The Neverending Story, the gate of mirrors, and the Nothing, a dark cloud that floats in the sky, takes away everything.

shame

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A deserted breeze hangs and waits and talks with staggered shapes in the sky like a melancholic child, held behind and forced to face the wall as better taught and better-tempered children dig for ancient ruins just ou

Refugio Beach

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We can’t see anything except for glimpses of the other’s eyes, hands, mouths when we move.

bolt the door: revised & shortened

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After her death I begin to see and hear her ghost. It’s at night she scares me the most. The mumbled groans from behind her bedroom door. Granny, lying there, rigid, arms by her sides, her watery eyes fixed on the ceiling.

placenta

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he old man shaves with his electric Remington razor the morning the baby dies. The shrill echo of the phone in the hall brings him thundering down the stairs and as he stands there in his string vest and y-fronts he begins to shake. I make it halfway down

Jared Sampson's Mom

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She died in a car crash yesterday. She was driving down Hawthorne, past the strip mall with the Benihana’s, when her ’05 Corolla unaccountably careened over the center meridian and into oncoming traffic.

Inwood Night

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The sound of a girl screaming wakes us in the middle of the night she’s standing out on the fire escape

The Bad Things

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Daddy comes home, calls us to his room, makes us stand in line, tells us to do it again...

Woman Things

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...when the doctor scrapes the baby out, he cuts out all the things that make babies, too...