It wasn’t till near the end of the season that I was put on something other than crab case-up during my stints at mandatory overtime. I was a puller one day, dragging crabs down from the large pile that’s dropped on the balcony just outside where I stood, their large orange claws gripping at my [...]
I got food sickness towards the end, had pain in my stomach like a knife turning round and round, and was shitting water every twenty minutes or so, and so I did what any normal person would do, I openly wept then went to the health people right by the breakroom and stood in the [...]
Originally I had thought Chris was a queen, but he’d turned out to be the most macho of them all. He would only stack the pallet, because it was the most physically strenuous job, and when I did it, would repeatedly remind me that he could do it faster as he slid boxes down the [...]
I had been explaining to RJ about how Barack Obama looked like he might win the nomination as the democratic candidate for president. At first he didn’t believe it because he said America would never elect a black man, but then he kept bringing it up, and he was breaking down freezers that day, and [...]
There’s something to be said for the derelict strolling down the side of an unpaved street at two in the morning, from one end of the pacific to the other, the ocean lapping against sand and pebble like a breeze or the hairs of your forearm, and there there are the rest of us lined [...]
My mind wanders in and out of recollections and fantasy, one moment having lost track of the child I’ve never had, the next discovering all this time I thought I was walking from one place to another, in actuality been floating a few inches above the ground. My dreams have grown rich with fires and [...]
There was no near dawn mist and no greenery damp with morning dew, but there were some very distinct things it was. Mostly wet and cold, and maybe a little bit bitter, as in the bitter grin, but also those loose-limbed smiles of the fallen, like a sprained toy glaring back at you from above [...]
Sideways as predicted, the snow silvery in this light. I had been sick, my nostrils full of mucus felt like thousand island infusion. My memories fragmenting to no longer focus on the single island of Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs, instead walking through the greenery of Jamaica Plain, off to another garden party I wouldn’t [...]
Birds of a feather may flock together, but Ezra Pound is on his way down. In short, I did not belong here and everyone knew it, but something had happened since then. First and foremost being that I’d proved myself the only one capable of sorting roe with any efficiency and had stopped having to [...]
I was strong for the first time in my life, and there’s not much that’s better than that, when you’re surrounded by horrible men. Or stronger than I’d been, and gritting my teeth. I thought occasionally of ants and their individuality.