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Made in Japan

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It was in the spring of 1958 when I first arrived in Kobe, Japan, traveling aboard a Norwegian merchant ship, looking to make movies on a limited budget. Superior quality cameras, lenses, and film were being produced in Japan at a fraction of the cost for similar products…

Fable

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The Muse stands at the summit of a paragraph playing with a yo-yo.

Floater

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Just because I’m suicidal doesn’t mean I don’t care about whacking my head on some service railing ten stories down. The fact that I’m going to jump doesn’t lessen my fear of propellers or a broken back.

Grace Gladys Gibbons

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Grace Gibbons is a way of life.

Picturing Utrillo

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Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

Takin' a Break

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The place turns out to have a really nice ambiance, and while the pasta is only passable—though I ordered, I believe, the cheapest plate on the menu, so maybe I got what I deserved—the background dinner music playing is "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco.

Flamingos

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Over fifty plastic flamingos stood silently at attention... as if eating sea urchins out of our lawn.

Litter Box

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When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.

Sparrow and Mockingbird Greet the Dawn

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feathered waves of tangerine peach

That Buddhist Swing

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We spend life, or much of it rather, chasing epiphanies promised to us by hip prophets and free spirits.

The Poet Reads

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If ever I read a poem aloud It will not be from a podium’s shelter

A Little Piece of Humanity

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It wasn't meant to happen like this— the shutter, the feeling of breathlessness when he touched her shoulder, even after he had pointed out all of the things she had done incorrectly throughout the day. They had been married for five years in February, and as…

Casting It

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Truth came out of it, a little bug that hovered there...

Borges in the SUB

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"There's Borges."

The Haunting

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the ugliness will not be denied

My Worst Nightmare

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diplopic haiku

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Copernicus spied/a new centrifugal spin:/Bosch saw what he meant.

Rainbow

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“What I really want to know is, why is a straight guy called Caspar opening a lesbian leather bar in Berlin anyway?” Shona asked. “Schöneberg must really be going to the dogs.”

The Legend of Bo Grass

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Bo ruled the city by suggesting new scent formulas in a booming croak of a voice that shook the earth for acres around, yet as a result everybody on the block smelled like fairy breath. Or, on his BAD BREATH DAYS all of the people reeked of rotted sushi f

Chicagoo (from Swink literary journal)

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When Kim handed me some of her husband’s condoms—“Here, use these”—out of one of their bedroom dresser drawers, could she sense the astonishment I was trying my best not to show?

Cool Gray Redemption

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I’ve been such a fool, so reckless and untrue.

G.

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The stand is designed to clasp two guitars, one on either side. She cradles an Ovation in her arms, a guitar variety our high school friends used to call a soup bowl. In the stand is an acoustic-electric hybrid that I toyed with for ten…

Bogart Generations

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Great Uncle did stunts in silents and shot a man in a cowboy one-reeler, then vanished to the hills like Roy Earle in High Sierra.

South 55

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This is a wife pregnant with spiders

Migrant Workers

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Emma pushes through the door of the corner market, aiming briskly for her car, keys in one hand, grocery bag in the other, shoulder bag slung. Best not to make eye contact with the loitering boozers and bikers from the bar next door. Double take. Can't…

"Hadrian's Farewell" as Tanka and Haiku

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Little rambling soul,/kind guest, friend: leave me laughing,/pallid stiff, and bare.

Visiting Sally

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Buddy was in a garage band. They were pretty good. “Soul Harbor“ they called themselves.

Weary

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At this time of night, the fluorescence makes his eyes bleed. The muscles in his legs are tight; walking's more of a necessity than anything else. Alexander pushes the shopping cart down the endless gray tile floors of the Grand Union on 35.

A Christmas Tale

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leaning over the banister, her Christmas waist making the wood swoon and creak, a warning sign if there ever was one...

Paper House

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Because if they’re wavering, it's about the coin, always about the coin.