Alphabetical stories

On news of your demise

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The news just now that you are dead

On Not Having an Affair With a Flamboyant Minor Dadaist Poetess

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It’s just that—well, I don’t know how to put this— With a Dadaist poet a non-affair is the height of erotic bliss.

On Our Way

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  They met on a bus. The bus got lost. He had corn chips. She had a tuna sandwich. They shared. “This is good,” he said. “Did you make this?” …

On Perfect Marble

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So the subtle shadow settles onto perfect marble on the floor of the ocean when the sunlight blooms over space and time but only in the near future as it has always been

On reading the “Lives of the Poets” by Michael Schmidt

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And now its done! Five months read! This book is batoning in my head. Its eleven o'clock AM and hot as hell, even the breeze, billowing nets through the sliding screen adds sweat, cuts me down to size. I will needs again to…

On Reading Yeats' "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory"

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Two logs to make a fire burn, one real, one fake, for we have learned that's all an evening fire takes.

On Second Thought

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when thoughts of you waffle in through memories scent

On Senior Prom & Being Profoundly Unpleasant

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When I was in high school, we had a prom. The juniors were paired with the seniors; and when I was a senior, I recall meeting my date for the first time. You can imagine she was not enthralled.

On Socks

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There’s a hole in my sock, just large enough that my big toe keeps slipping out.

On Strike in the City

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The first day of the Steamfitters and Pipewranglers Local 175 strike was exhilarating. Every man (accurate; there were no women in the union) showed his support outside the Willgarden High Rise Corporation's company headquarters on Fifth Avenue, shaking unreadable signs…

On the Anniversary of My Grandfather's Passing

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What I remember about my grandfather were his fart jokes. When he wasn't telling us kids about how young David defeated the mighty Goliath or how Saul the pharisee humbled himself to become Paul the Apostle, he was telling us about the baby burp that begg

On the Beach

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I wear my Whittier College mascot-logo-inscribed ballcap: FEAR THE POETS. On Lovers Point I write haiku. A man and woman picnic —— he never off his cell phone. I approach and hand her my poem. They depart without exchanging a word… or a look. man and…

On the Bench (Matthew III)

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turn your face

On the Country Roads Tonight: I Don't Care - song

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Wheels are spinning On the country roads tonight I’m driving all alone No one else in sight And the wind’s in my hair And I don’t care Yeah, the wind’s in my hair And I don’t care

On The Day That Norman Mailer Died

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Hollow as spit over rock Was the mood in the library...

On The Death of A Friend

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I heard today about your friend

On the Deeper Slants of the Universe

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Everything makes sense.

On the Empire Builder

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Naked American Apparel models romp with elk and antelope, and the Ghost of Richard Nixon directs traffic with the grace of a Wounded Hyena.

on the morning of my final

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And there was one girl from Ireland, with her thick Irish brogue, who came into my bedroom early on the morning before my final exam for my Masters degree in the writing program at Irvine. She knew I was so nervous about taking the exam that I hadn’t sl

On the Road

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how did they not know

On the Rocks

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On the Rocks What matters these, to all, below the crest… If privilege of mind-blankness is the bay's? Remembrance breeds no fathoms of its rest- As plumb the circuit lulled, at each rephrase Of capture,…

On the Roof

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Marie was on the roof. The deck, with its cool concrete pavers and faded cedar Adirondack chairs, was one of the reasons she and Harold had bought their condo in this building. The only ugly part of the roof was the chain-link fence along its edge; soon after they moved…

on the shore on the shore

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I await, here at Sandymount Strand / There's a stony bed and moistened sand / Couples dance away into futurity / With their dogs upon the shore

On The Sly

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She was a sucker punch.

On The Stoop

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The leaves were meaningless because they were no longer connected to the trees.

On the Way To

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Robbie’s wrists itched hard, the cord was sunk in so tight his hands were bordering now on blue, now purple. Too late to matter.

On The Way To Shabriz

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these dead letters for you... and then they withdrew... something happened on the way to shabriz... my fingertips fell on their knees.

On the Way to Your First AA Meeting

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The memory of thinking in some other language

On Tuesday

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When they talk, they put their hands like a cup around their mouth

On Tundergarth Farm

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There’s an oak tree in Hanover, New Hampshire. Twenty years old, it is still a sapling. I imagine that one day the tree will have a commanding view of the Connecticut River and Norwich, Vermont, where my mom sat in bed, crying, watching everything unfol