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Three New Poems

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Letter(s)The sky set itself on fire, butit really didn't make a whole lot of difference. Birdsknew not to worry any more thanusual. Trees thought and made the mostof their landscapes as a way ofbeing modern and yet timeless. It's onlypeople who suffer from too much…

Jelly Doughnuts (from The New Yorker)

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Simmi's only been in New York three weeks, but the second night she was here Buck took her to a coffee place he knew, and now Simmi makes sure he takes her there every night...

Aerobics 6 p.m.

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Dizzy but still alive Inside this conversation I ask if you have a sister And if she'll know me If I'm with you.

Lethargy

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‘Your hands are very clean’ she said to the furniture salesman. His name was Morrison. "After Jim" Morrison Pentworthy. His father specialized in Doors.

Apartments

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. . . there is nothing so selfish as sleep.

New Moon

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circa the early 90s, Buzz Aldrin and my father had been invited to a dinner at someone's house on Bainbridge Island and gotten lost.

Girma Dali - Chapter 2

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This is Chapter 2 of my serialzied novel Girma Dali. The title character reflects upon his youth and the young boy, Benga, who mentored him into adolescence.

How to Make an Atom Bomb While Your Wife's Away

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I rummage around to see which of our many countertop appliances might do the trick. Yogurt maker? No, I need something with more muscle. The Cuisinart--just the thing! I pick through the detachable blades—where’s the isotope shredder?

Exasperation Management

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We honor fierce, quick, cunning/ thought-in-action types

Tortoise

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Seven black and orange Tortoise-shell kittens nursed in a crate the day Sue returned from rehab, to her parent's Atlanta home.

Turbidity

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Where seldom is heard an encouraging word

Orbit

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And it seemed that, just a little more—and the solution would be found, and then a new, beautiful life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that the most complicated and difficult part was just beginning.

Tuscumbia, Alabama

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My dad at the wheel, my mother's ulcer inflamed, she puked her way across northern Alabama that summer, from Huntsville and the rusting rockets to Tuscumbia, the farthest any of us had been west. We drove through raw, blistered towns,…

Arcade Encounter

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Looking over the crowd in the arcade is like looking over a crowd of zombies.

Summer Reading

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The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.

ROAD LESSONS

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"Do you have to call your brother a loser? He is not a loser and that was just uncalled for"

The Coming of the Apocalypse

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The Operations Management Guru was visiting the twenty-fourth floor on Tuesday, and everyone at the company was wicked with fear.

A Little Fishing

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Harpo sits and looks at something I can't see. I drink beer and ask him questions. I ask him how they found the cancer. Backache, he says. He went to see a doctor.

Alone

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It's not loneliness I'm afraid of. It's how I would be happy to be alone too much.

Take Your Gun to Work Day

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In a rousing show of support for guns and the owners who love them, the Legislature passed and Governor Greg Abbott gleefully signed a law proclaiming April 15 as Take Your Gun to Work Day in Texas.

A Vicious Deer

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A Vicious Deer The man came across the hall to talk to us. He was buying some paintings. He had a white deer on a leash. Fosca (our Malamute) said: “That's a vicious deer.” She kept putting her paw on its shoulder. I said: “You bet

Rock-a-Hoola

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She wears a green and pink bikini and walks real slow, poking her chest out so people will notice her.

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…

WE NEVER

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No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…

What's Wrong With Stella by Starlight?

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Suzie went on to become an anchorwoman in Los Angeles after college. She had tiny bruises on her feet where she’d shoot heroin since she didn’t want tracks to show on her arms, where they’d ruin the effect of a little black cocktail dress

New skin

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For ten minutes I would have to sit perfectly still on the edge of her bed, thinking of Road Runner and the Flash and wishing I could do anything but sit there with my feet in warm, foamy water.

The Empty Bed

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But by day the birds / of prey were in control.

Treading Water

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I can tread water like this for months maybe longer

True Fear

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Flush, a sputter, and the water level rises, slowly. Flush again.

Me And My Liberal Friends

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“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f