Sean Jackson's Blog
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May.22.2013
This blind guy gets his girlfriend to help him kill somebody. This is his grandmother they end up killing. A woman beloved in her community. The type who goes to church on Wednesday nights, plays bingo, helps the other older ladies get their groceries into their apartments, but still has a glass...
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May.20.2013
The Doors were rock and roll’s Sandy Koufax. Rocketing to stellar heights after college, gone for good by the age of thirty. Legendary in a way because of their brevity. On the day of keyboardist Ray Manzarek’s passing, I can’t help but recall the greatest memory I have of The Doors. Yeah,...
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May.20.2013
It’s easy to see why Jordan blacks out his windows. There is a leaky drain pipe along the side of his house, a nosey neighbor who is friendly with the cops, and a rival dealer who lives out back on the other side of a busted chain fence.
But we don’t like Jordan so much either. He just hasn’t...
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May.17.2013
This is a story from a guy I know; I’ll call him Ernie.
…..
I get up in the morning around 5 a.m., if I’m working or off. If I have been drinking the night before I get up and eat a little breakfast and watch the news some, then take a nap until like 10. It was a Halloween (on a Friday) and I had...
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May.16.2013
You never want to be somebody’s story. From the days when we have to start having to wear shoes, we are taught that growing up means we cultivate pride and privacy. Don’t show that to her, and don’t let him see that.
By the time we develop an awareness of the proper place to pick our noses, we...
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May.13.2013
My young life begins in the last dregs of a darkness. Deep wood walls and ugly shag carpet, snowy Portland in winter sun that at its best can only be called bleary. Yellow, brown, yellow gray, yellow, blue, brown and gray. A tall man, dark as an Arab, stirring instant coffee. The kitchen table I...
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May.10.2013
This dude with an eyebrow stud worms his way out of the galley and nudges past the bar, carrying a bowl plate in his palm and skillfully balancing another one just like it on his tattooed forearm. It’s a nice Old English font, half of a Nietzsche quote.
“Only makes you stronger, right?” you ask...
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May.05.2013
Here’s what we don’t know about America: where will they put our fine china once we’ve passed on?
I was driving away from a gas station the other day and I heard a young man tell his work buddies that the United States is still the greatest place on earth, so love it or leave it. This was...
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Apr.29.2013
When you’re Jellybean Joe’s kid, you have the crossover down before you can perfect swirly caps in cursive. At least that’s the way we think of Kobe Bryant. Our man Kobe spent a chunk of childhood in central Italy, watching Sr. Bean gel with Rieti’s hoops clubs. We forget a whole lot of it after...
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Apr.28.2013
The truth. Since the first Carolina daybreak I remember, hot and salty and yellow, loud and sweet and imbued with rancid secrets, I somehow wanted truth. A little sad, quiet Catholic boy in the wrong place, I sought ecclesiastical truth. These black faces on the bus, angry as a bird shot at and...
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Apr.24.2013
There are four guys to a cell after court day. By supper, when the judge has sent everyone he’s going to send off to state prison, we each got a bunk and nobody sleeps on the floor. The guys leave things behind, stuff that can be put to good use. Little foil tubes of toothpaste, washcloths...
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Apr.21.2013
It’s laughable to think you’re supposed to be hunched over a bowl of sugary cereal peering at the lucent screen of a laptop, hair mussed in the manner of Beethoven, nodding away at the scribes who tell us how our world is careening through the cosmos.
Definitely they think it looks cool to be...
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Apr.17.2013
People are saying the South is fading, fizzling like a bottle rocket fired into a greasy lake.
Who are these people?
Still other people are saying the South will rise again, Lazarus-like and bearded (with all the Allman Brothers LPs on digital), hungry for ribs and chicken like nobody’s...
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Apr.12.2013
This was the guy your mother didn’t tell you about. On the outside, if you saw him strolling home from the greengrocer’s, you’d nod and say Family man. Nice young bloke with that gray tweed suit picking up some things on ‘is way home from the office. But inside you’d know he was twisted, contorted...
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Apr.08.2013
There’s not enough potato salad in the world to comfort a seventeen-year-old enough to get him to go to a family reunion or holiday gathering without receiving scads of grief. Your rearview mirror will be chock full of withering looks. His earbuds will hiss each of the hundred-eighty miles, round...
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About Sean
Sean Jackson’s latest stories have been published in Splash of Red, Beyond the Margins, and Thieves Jargon, Carte Blanche, Forge Journal, among other literary magazines. He is currently seeking a publisher for a recently completed collection of stories. From...
Connections
Causes Sean Jackson Supports
PFLAG, Amnesty International, AA, Catholic Social Services
Sean’s Favorite Books
Light in August, Wyoming Stories (all three books),
Sean is a fan of
