UNLAWFUL DISORDER
(pub. date 6/2022 from Jaded Ibis Press)
THE SHIMMER SEEMED to follow him wherever he went. Before, he only saw it when he was ‘sick’, coiled in the corner of his bedroom, or standing tall and murky in a dark corner of the house, or watching him from a window when he approached. It no longer seemed to be tied to the house. It now hovered in the periphery of his sight, visible only when he cocked his head a certain way. But he could feel it there, even when he didn’t see it, sometimes gold, sometimes purple, always black.
It watched him when he roamed the casinos. It watched him wander anxiously from card game to card game, mocking him when he lost, undulating when he won. It stood behind Magdeline’s head when she scolded him. It watched as he and Eden sat in darkened movie houses, when they laughed at restaurants. It mocked him when he lay spent but unfulfilled, unable to ejaculate after untold time spent in a state of arousal, Eden sweating dimly beside him.
A Blind Eye (2021)
ninestar press
“SHE WOULD HAVE kept him home every day. Every morning when he told her the kids said terrible, dreadful things. Laughing, pointing at him. She wanted to protect him. Kendall wanted him to be tough, resilient.
“He’s got to learn that living in this world with black skin as your calling card doesn’t give you the privilege of hiding, staying home when it gets tough out there. This… this syndrome ain’t no harder than being born Black.”
Kendall said that, but his behavior showed that the problem was more than a desire to have his son stand strong in his identity. He was ashamed of him. He treated him as an embarrassment, an aversion: the same way those elementary school children, whose mouths hurled vile, hateful things, and the faculty, who pretended not to hear the hate assaulting her child day after day.
She learned to become someone else. She became Rueben’s warrior, but masked it behind the facade of a solicitous suburban mother. She wore flowered, pleated dresses with bowed collars, paired with white hosiery and tied her drab blonde hair with ribbon, coiled it above her head and brushed out feathered bangs. …..
She baked cookes and cakes, and purchased gifts for new teachers. She conducted introductory orientations each school year where she instructed people on the specifics of Prader-Willi syndrome and the special needs Rueben might require…”
A BLIND EYE explores the trauma inflicted by bullying and parental abuse, as well as domestic violence in same sex relationships.
State of the Nation (2018)
The psychic ‘ghosts’ of the Atlanta Child Murders and the Tuskegee Experiment looms over three teens growing up in suburban Philadelphia during the early 1980’s.
Luqman, Dion and Santos try to make sense of the ubiquitious disappearances and subsequent murders of boys that look just like them as they search to discover who they will become as they move from childhood to adult.
Luqman lives in the affluent squalor of middle class existence, where the property values are high and the struggle to maintain status come with a cost. He is anxious to escape the roving eyes and predatory acts of the adults around him. Haunted by news accounts of the missing children, he tries to find a way to help.
Santos mind is constantly full of schemes to earn enough money to take care of himself and his special needs brother while their mother is out of state for long stretches of time, working to keep a roof over their heads.
Getting into cars with men that believe he is a girl allows Dion to take care of his widowed infirm mother, stricken with an unnamed illness. But the image of the murdered boys in Atlanta race through his head as he wonders how long before his secret is discovered.
“A mesmerizing tale of racial inequality and sexual discovery.”
Kirkus Reviews
finalist: 2019 Lambda Literary Award, Eric Hoffer Book Award, Montaigne Medal, First Horizon Award
