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… I used to love it when it would rain in Los Angeles. I felt that the city was made suddenly reflective by the rain, that it was being coated in another, deeper layer of what it was by the falling moisture. It made me sad and that pleased me. It was a moment of relief from what I took to be the exhausting project of pretending to be happy all of the time.

Come the marrow-hours when he couldn’t sleep,

the boy river-brinked and chorded.

Mud-bedded himself here in the root-mesh; bided.

Sieved our alluvial sounds—

At Bob’s Big Boy, one day in the summer, my mother and I pressed together in the phone booth and emptied her purse out on the metal ledge. There were hundreds of scraps of paper, pencils, leaking pens, scuffed makeup tubes, brushes woven with a fabric of lint and hair, a bra, and finally, my mother’s brown leather address book, with the pages falling out. We wanted to call my father in Las Vegas. It was already over a year since we’d flown there. The number was written, carefully, in brown ink.

WEN CHANG

he was leading students in an obscene chant.

SAUL

what'd he say?

WEN CHANG

"u.s.a. u.s.a."

SAUL

oh come ON, that's every titty bar in america.

WEN CHANG

surrounded by student protestors in white headbands. it was a clear political protest. a declaration of war.

SAUL

war?! are you crazy?

WEN CHANG

less than twenty-four hours on chinese soil and this is what he does. how could you do this to me?

            Jilly took her head out of the oven mainly because it was hot and the gas did not work independently of the pilot light. Stupid new technology. And preferring her head whole and her new auburn sew-in weave unsinged, and having no chloroform in the house, she conceded that she would not go out like a poet. But she updated her status, just the same:

                    A final peace out

                    before I end it all.

              Treat your life like bread,

                  no edge too small

                          to butter.

            Jilly was not a poet or even an aspiring one. She just liked varying her posts as much as possible.

Copyright © by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. From Heads of the Colored People: Stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. Published by 37 Ink/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.

Go Ju go Ju go.

Lightskinned Rainbow

eclipsed Tick Tock,

his chocolate walk-partner.

Incestuous Pootchie and Tan.

Both Frogs. Squirrel. Crazy ass Sponge.

Bama Duke’s lopsided,

sticky daughter, Peaches.

Out b-shaped barber,

Blinky. We miss you,

Missy, rest in peace.

John Rocks-on-Rocks.

The Young Dillingers.

Freckles versus Baby Tim.

Cabalou stuttering,

i-m-m-mi-t-ta-ting Johnny Lips.

Hillbilly, Lefty, Itchy and Skip.

Dootie Bug’s first

baby’s mama, leaving.

Tootie had Fin.