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Sunbeams

Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.

George Bernard Shaw

Breeds

We live in perilous times. All human beings have always lived in perilous times, but the perils of our times are our own and we know them well. For several years now, a sizable group of Americans have seen Indians — or the Indian way — as an approach to the diffusion of some peril.

Worth Fighting For

An Interview With Holly Near

I just got back from Nicaragua. I hadn’t known much at all about this country that the United States has been involved with for many years. The Marines were in Nicaragua as long ago as the Thirties. How can you live in a country and not know about a place where your Marines have been for that long?

Selected Poems

My Father’s Grandson

I called my father at his bank in Tulsa. He wasn’t there, as usual, so I left a message with his secretary, as usual. “Tell him, Helouise, that he has a new grandson.” I had to repeat the message twice, as Helouise was well aware that I was an only child and quite unmarried.

Black Reaper

We couldn’t have been more delighted, Buck and I, he in the warm arms of Mr. Boston, me in the warm arms of life in the sunny south, at a time when the shadows were hazy, the sunshine was bright, and the smell of the newly cropped bermuda grass touched my nostrils, and the days awaited me breathlessly, endlessly.

Theme For English 1200

“As a white person,” a student asks me, “are you uncomfortable teaching black literature to blacks?”

“Of course,” I answer. “Of course.”

Entering The House Of The ’Lord

For the first time I wonder if I have gone too far, overlooking too many potential danger signs in this landlord/tenant relationship, and maybe I should ask for my money back, take the lease form from the wife’s hands where it is lying and tear it into pieces, but then I decide that I am as worthy of two walls of windows and a murphy bed on swiss avenue as anyone else.

My Neighborhood

Georgia’s richest county’s finest housing project, the Berkeley Flatlands, evenly spaced mailboxes

Tchad — A Memoir

Tchad, in the front seat, turned to me in the back, waved his arms expansively and yelled above the traffic noise, “Tell us again how your grandmother barks like a dog, Linne! Tell it again!”