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This is out of order. It’s meant to go before the other one. This is some fat black guy at the airport who tried to sell people inspirational poems. They were written on laminated cards. He handed everybody in my row a card and then came back to collect them. A near-sighted businessman held the card an inch from his eyeglasses. "Hah!" he said. "Hah." And his face went an alarming shade of red. But when the black guy came around again he handed it right back and didn’t say a word. He wouldn’t even look at him.
    Mine was a short poem about faith and responsibility. Two little angels playing electric guitars stood on a wedding cake of clouds. I paid him five dollars for it and tucked it in my pocket.
    "You write that?" I said. "Sure," he said, slipping a rubber band over a wad of dirty one dollar bills. But when he walked away I could hear him talking softly to himself about dimes and dozens and dumb-ass palookas and the size of the needle he’d like to stick in our eyeballs.
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