Cloud Moving Hands

I Hated the Hairy Ones

62 . . . he was a very good hater. —Samuel Johnson I hated the hairy ones of the graceless shuffle, arms stretched past knees, knuckles grazing the ground. They lurched as if on crutches, as unseemly as the pelts they sprouted, flagrant patches I wanted to bleach and uproot. I hated the fat ones of the uninspired hunger, dull teeth butchering charred slabs of beast. They hauled unwashed flesh from unmade beds to barbecues at sundown, hurling bones and beer bottles like ineffectual spears. I hated the pale ones of the self-inflated arrogance, pink as plucked chickens, aggressively pecking the air. They squabbled among themselves, catapulting assertions right through the roof of the henhouse. They thought they were smarter than me. � I Hated the Hairy Ones 63 I hated the leather-skinned ones of the foreign tongue, tribes of these garlic eaters and stone haulers mowing across neighborhood lawns. Turbans of rags, nomadic tents of loose-fitting hand-me-downs kept them faceless to me, faceless and poor, nameless and dumb. I hated the old ones of the prying porches, old biddies with nothing better to do than to see what I was up to with my boxes of razors, my jugs of bleach, my potent teas, my nightly purges. I never waved hello. Old biddies with nothing better to do than rock on front porches, silently judging me. ...