Holcomb, Gary

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rather carrying voice, "God, what a dip- shit." But the Poet was magnanimous to all who assisted Him in the ice cream problem. Soon He would reward them with a reading.He looked like a fat Woody Allen.THE CRYING OF SARAHThrough our thin walls I hear the young family next door. The husband and wife share that sort of relationship which, though it may not be based on hate, hate is but a hair’s breath away. And in the middle I hear the crying of Sarah.Plainly, the young man is unhappy with his lot, most of his time at home he taunts his wife and bangs around pieces of furniture. The wife possesses a whining, I- told-you-so voice; because of its high-pitched, shrieking quality, and the way the wall muffles only low noises while allowing the upper-registers to seep through, there is the eerie illusion of listening to her argue with her­self. Occasionally, I hear the thud of a piece of furni­ture being hurled across the room.Amidst all this I can easily discern Sarah's crying. One subject the couple agree on is that Sarah is a "brat." "Goddamnit!" the wife screams a few moments after whiningly reproaching her husband, "Shut up, Sarah, shut up!" "Shut up!" the husband barely comes through in his muffled, low, manly voice, "you fuckin' little brat!" He then, I gather by the protestations of the young mother, locks the year- old infant in the bathroom, at which point epithets are reissued at each other. A silence then permeates between the two adults, and the only sound to be heard is Sarah's crying; she is not whimpering —  these walls do not let through mere whimpering —  these are wails, wails from the inner body, from deep down in the diaphragm, the cry of an injury that will never heal.That is when I rise from the sofa and turn up the stereo.—  Gary Holcomb Long Beach CA6

The Crying of Sarah

http://ddd.uab.cat/pub/wormwood/wormwood_a1984v24n1i93/wormwood_a1984v24n1i93p6.pdf

The Crying of Sarah

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