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Self-Portrait from the Other Side
- The Kent State University Press
- Chapter
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4 s e L F - P o r t r a i t F r o M t h e o t h e r s i d e The woods behind my elementary school held ghosts and gang members. We studied the carvings in the trees: GD, gangster disciples or some spirit afraid of GOD. We weren’t afraid of neither until we were alone. My friend carried a gun to school and we all believed we were magic. That year my grandfather died. That year i found a Pete rock tape and twisted my hat backwards like an exorcism gone wrong. not wrong meaning wrong, but. not to say i was hard, but. When i write the letter O, i imagine it burns through the paper, that to praise means to open by force. The dropped jaw, the bullet hole, the neighborhood i can never leave. ...