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August 14 - October 14, 2020
What shall I do?
what shall I do?
(Poor Godshaping. Lack of forethought.)
Carrying a gun can win you a lot of unwanted attention from the police if you catch them in the wrong mood. Yet everyone who has one carries it. The trick, of course, is not to get caught carrying it.
The others are asleep now,
God is Change. I hate God.
the black bones of our homes.
the human maggots,
The bright, clear, early morning sunlight made the whole scene less real somehow, more nightmarelike.
So, in company with five strangers, I plundered my family’s home.
Especially if I could get the money under the rocks by the lemon tree.
Richard Moss,
Robin Baiter,
Russell Dory,
We’ve never been rich, but to the desperate, we looked rich.
Did our community die so that addicts could make a help the poor political statement?
Haha
Layla Yannis,
Michael Talcott,
Jeremy Baiter, one of Robin’s brothers, Philip Moss, George Hsu,
Juana Montoya, Rubin Quintanilla, Lidia Cruz. …
Why hadn’t anyone else stayed to salvage what they could?
I couldn’t call the police.
the police
Zahra Moss and Harry Balter—
Bibi?
Less?
Kindness eases Change
Sunday, is a day of rest and healing for us.
Theology
Haha
Their misery eases my own, somehow. It gives me moments when I don’t think about my family.
I may not be able to get that far. But I’ll get to a place where water doesn’t cost more than food, and where work brings a salary.
I’m not going to spend my life as some kind of twenty-first century slave.”
The only jobs that pay serious money are the kind our parents had, the kind that require college degrees.”
“They kill little kids,” she said. “Out here in the world, they kill kids every day.”
He was offering trust. He meant we could trust each other. That was no small thing.
“Mixed couples catch hell whether people think they’re gay or straight. Harry’ll piss off all the blacks and you’ll piss off all the whites. Good luck.”
“I’m inexperienced,” I admitted. “But I can learn. You’re going to be one of my teachers.”
“One?” she said. “Who have you got but me?” “Everyone.”
That was the end of my money—the money I had packed in my emergency pack. I haven’t touched the money I took from the foot of the lemon tree.
The rule is that if you buy something in the store, you can sell something of similar value in the structure. Your receipt, coded and dated, is your peddler’s license.
The 101 would take us up the coast toward Oregon.
Beggars, thieves, and murderers live here, too.
a street in mid-twentieth-century China—
the freeway crowd is a heterogenous mass—
Is Lauren’s in the holster and visible? Question
A woman alongside us collapsed. I got no impression of pain from her,
Hmmm, wonder why. No pain I presume.
Haha
Keiths.
Predators.
If trouble came, I hoped we could kill it and keep walking.
