We dialed the newly dead but they wouldn't answer. We texted, begging us to call them back, but the newly dead don't know how to read. In America, a … - Saeed Jones

In America, a gathering of people is called target practice or a funeral, depending on who lives long enough to define the terms.

I though productivity was what survival looked like.

Toni Morrison’s sentences were like rivers with murky bottoms. They didn’t obey the rules I was learning in school. When I stepped in, I couldn’t see my feet; I retreated back to the shore.

I hungered for the power of the all-American man, the Marlboro Man and the Marlboro Man's firstborn son, the high-school quarterback, the company's future CEO, Ernest Hemingway, John Wayne, Odysseus, Hercules, Achilles, the shield itself, the stone-cut archetype, the goddamned Everyman, the golden boy, the one.