What an American City Sounds Like
It’s a space where language is manipulated and contorted and pulled and borrowed. It sounds like everywhere and anywhere else.
This is Bayou Diaries, a column by Bryan Washington on his life and history in diverse, expansive Houston.
reallytheir
just fine,arehave
lonefirstgood ones!us!
softer
someone,them.
I told the guy I didn’t mean it. He told me he didn’t mean it. We shared an awkward pat on the back, which turned into an even less graceful hug, and it felt like a metaphor for something else.
point
sound
Bryan Washington is the author of Lot, with fiction and essays appearing in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, Boston Review, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, MUNCHIES, American Short Fiction, GQ, FADER, The Awl, Hazlitt, and Catapult. He’s the recipient of an O. Henry Award, and he lives in Houston.
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