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commerce of otters.
Colleton River
I seem to embody everything that is wrong with the twentieth century.
I could measure my own diminishment with their sunny ripening.
“Don’t listen to a thing your parents say. That’s the only rule of life I want you to be sure and follow.”
“She’s just jealous that you’re a doctor and she peaked out after winning a spelling bee in third grade.
And a southerner is one of God’s natural fools.”
“You girls don’t know what we menfolk put ourselves through to become fat shits.”
psychotic interlude,
Pawleys Island
Fort Moultrie.
If I could hurt the body, I would not notice the coming apart of the soul.
I do not like cities that dishonor their own marshes.
arcane
You don’t understand how horrible it is to be a woman in America.”
New York Goddamn City. A man who wants privacy would never live here.”
Nat Turner lives deep in the eyes of all modern black men.
Savannah’s second book of poetry, The Prince of Tides.
Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.
“Philip Roth despises both Jews and women and you do not have to be either Jewish or female to see that,” she said, delivering her statement as though the subject could be dropped forever.
American teachers are all trained to think poor; we love conferences and book fairs with hospitality suites, expenses paid and banquets of rubbery chicken, sweet French dressing, and unspeakable peas.
Coach of Unremembrance.
chiaroscuro
I want them to take from you the knowledge of how to be the gentlest, the most perfect brother. Savannah
elegiac
Infant of Prague.
“You can’t make chicken salad out of chickenshit.”
nonpareil
To love one’s children is to love oneself, and this was a state of supererogatory grace denied my parents by birth and circumstance.
Because she was beautiful she would think I was making a pass at her no matter what I did or said. That was both the truth and the danger of a beautiful woman in distress,
inimical
The house was known as Callanwolde.
They were southern women who felt a responsibility to protect their men from danger and bad news.
Eventually she will die the way all old people in America die … from humiliation, incontinence, boredom, and neglect.
philatelists
horse latitudes,
numismatics.
Capuchin catacombs.
But men are more sentimental than women. Mark my words.”
Like many men and women who make egregious and irretrievable mistakes with their own children, she would redeem herself by becoming the perfect grandmother.
Love has no weapons; it has no fists. Love does not bruise, nor does it draw blood.
Triune,
“Amos Wingo—The King of the Red-Letter Bible.”
But I dwelt in a world where nothing was explained to children except the supremacy of the concept of loyalty.
later dubbed my mother Our Lady of the Menses.
transubstantiation and the transmigration of souls,
Savannah welcomed two invisible companions into her life. She called the good angel Aretha; the dark angel was called Norton.
“garden angels.”
Only when she stopped loving me did I realize how much I loved her.”
gneiss.
