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A Man I Do Not Know |
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by Adele Mendelson
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1:00 |
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In a cheap hotel in a poor man’s town, I wake to a man I do not know. My clothes are a pile by the door as far away as Sweden. I remember the night—a black rain, a bar with colored lights, a Coca Cola sign beating yellow on the hoods of farm trucks in the yard. I remember the tinny jukebox blaring Spanish. I remember dancing every dance, drinking every beer until I no longer felt the eyes of the men nor the women pretending I was not there.
I slide out from under the blanket, and cross my arms to hide my breasts. He yawns, lifts up, and we startle like deer in a forest. Then, soft, he asks me in my language if I’m hungry and turns to let me dress.
Adele Mendelson is a Bay Area poet and fiction writer. She had a long career teaching English at UC Berkeley and has produced three volumes of poetry and a good number of short stories. Some of her themes are sex, death, and what happens when people venture out into unfamiliar territories.
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