I wrapped the watch in the old cigar box just as he had when he gave it to me for my twelfth birthday. He said his dad had given it to him when he turned twelve and that he wanted me to have it now that I was old enough to take care of it. The box still reeked of the cigars he used to smoke when he drank. He gave the watch to me a couple of days before he locked me and my mom and my little sister out of the house in one of his fits. That’s what mom used to call them, fits. We had to walk to Grandma’s in the dark that night and sleep on the green shag carpet of her living room that smelled like cat pee that’d been there for twenty years.…
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Evening rain seeped into the city ground to sleep that night. The boys wandered down alleys, jumped fences because they could, and ran through the dorm corridors for recruits. They found Sharon and Ashley in their room, readying for the night. The dresser door hung open and clothing collected in corners. They enlisted the girls to join them in their aimless revelry. “The night will be dreamless, and boundless.” They bartered promises for company.
Charlie had just taken his final exam earlier that day. It was the last day before holidays began. Then they would return home for a winter hiatus of boredom, Christmas turkeys and lousy reunions. The kind when everyone pretends that they have their life together and, over cheap cocktails parading as symbols of sophistication, smiles broadly at one another, bearing teeth, to convey post-adolescent success.…
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The sun will tell you
it is too early for destruction
continue to shut the doors and
windows to keep the house from
coughing on your misery
Basket the ripest apples and set them
on your neighbor’s porch with
a recipe for pie crust
Funeral his picture beside
the thickest root where
the moss refuses to grow
Rake a wreath of dry leaves
for kindle and smear mud into
the grooves of his carved name
Evacuate the birds and squirrels
say a prayer for the ants along branches
there isn’t enough time to save them all
Soak the tire swing in kerosene
swing back and forth against gravity
and light a match across the bark
Ignore the smell of burning flesh
let your lungs breath slow and
listen to the scream of leaves
– Karla Cordero …
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They’re always throwing goodness at you,
But with a little bit of luck, a man can duck.
—Lerner and Lowe
‘If you’re six four and weigh two hundred eighty pounds, maybe you should give up your dream of becoming a jockey.’ Those are the immortal words of the mythic Prussian martial philosopher, Hans Aough, and I’ve tried to make them my words to live by, in governing my own dreams. The thing about dreams for the future is that they have to be elastic because they usually have a whole lot of ass to cover with just a small patch of chintz.
I never dreamed Times Square could be ruined, but it was.
Used to be, you could go down there, score porn, find a hooker, black or white, boy or girl, didn’t matter.…
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St. Mark’s Place at dawn, trash blown, summer light’s perfect clarity so good for artists, wasted here. Lower Manhattan, brick walls remain, black-painted window sills. Somehow I thought the old world hanging on here had some right to peace, even if then or now, there was no peace. From Alphabet City I walk, young enough to be thrilled about it. He lay: rags, or a bag of trash. But a gray-brown face. But black pants, legs bent, shoes gone, one foot bare. I crossed the street. He looked asleep, but something lay too still. The street rose up around him, a pavement’s song, linear harmony, dun and straight. I saw death, & dancing toward the Village, I wondered what this conversation meant: am an urn to filled with flecks of ash, broken centuries later on the floor of sea amid rotten keels, home of colored fish, or, a funnel for all senses, piling cryptic lines like off-kilter bricks in a sagging building?…
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Cassius O’Haloran was a loyal customer of Matlock Savings Bank. He opened his first account as a youngster to deposit the pennies he found in the street, the same account seventy years later holding over one million dollars. In the interim he opened numerous checking and savings accounts, personal lines of credit, credit cards, investments, a safe deposit box and a home equity loan that nearly caused him to lose the house his father built. Safe to say, Matlock Savings Bank made a great deal of money off him. He didn’t have a family and he enjoyed going to the bank and talking with the tellers, whom he treated like the grandchildren he never had.
Cassius took a trip to the bank to order checks and sat with the new banker whose upside down nametag read Alana. …
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You predict that running into the other woman will be traumatic, catastrophic, a ripping of the sandy earth beneath your feet. You’ve studied enough Jerry Springer reruns to know that a millisecond of the meeting might prove exciting, the pulled hair and a nervous energy that drags you into actions you’ve never felt capable of before. Your body will instinctually discern how to throw a punch, fingers curled into a fleshy puppet bent on exacting revenge. Time will slow to a crawl while you savor every word you say, every inch of respect you reclaim.
Except when the moment happens, nothing you expected plays out. It is sickeningly comical how mundane the incident is. The apartment, his apartment, smells like dust and mildewed soap. The other woman hangs back behind a spare bedroom door, because there is no bravery or excitement present. …
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