I Loved My Parents... But That Can

But No One Walks Out Of His Family Without Reprisals: A Family Is Too Disciplined An Army To Offer Compassion To Its Deserters.

Comely Was The Town By The Curving River That They Dismantled In A Year's Time. Beautiful Was Colleton In Her Last Spring As She Flung Azaleas Like A Girl Throwing Rice At A Desperate Wedding. In Dazzling Profusion, Colleton Ripened In A Gauze Of Sweet Gardens And The Town Ached Beneath A Canopy Of Promissory Fragrance.

Here's What I Love: When A Great Writer Turns Me Into A Jew From Chicago, A Lesbian Out Of South Carolina, Or A Black Woman Moving Into A Subway Entrance In Harlem. Turn Me Into Something Else, Writers Of The World. Make Me Muslim, Heretic, Hermaphrodite. Put Me Into A Crusader's Armor, A Cardinal's Vestments. Let Me Feel The Pygmy's Heartbeat, The Queen's Breast, The Torturer's Pleasure, The Nile's Taste, Or The Nomad's Thirst. Tell Me Everything That I Must Know. Hold Nothing Back.

It Is An Art Form To Hate New York City Properly. So Far I Have Always Been A Featherweight Debunker Of New York; It Takes Too Much Energy And Endurance To Record The Infinite Number Of Ways The City Offends Me.

I Could Bear The Memory, But I Could Not Bear The Music That Made The Memory Such A Killing Thing.