You have to go away

to remember.

The hallways

of always.

I asked why he didn't just leave,

and he said 'the onliest way out is to die out and you have to die 'cause if you tries to leave, they'll kill you.'"

William Stetson Kennedy

was a traitor to his race and to his class. What's more, he was proud of it.

Enough distance

to be honest.

It's like being sick all the time, I think,

coming home from work, sick in that low-grade continuous way that makes you forget what it's like to be well. We have never in our lives known what it is to be well. What if I were coming home, I think, from doing work that I loved and that was for us all, what if I looked at the houses and the air and the streets, knowing they were in accord, not set against us, what if we knew the powers of this country moved to provide for us and for all people, how would that be, how would we feel and think and what would we create?