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If You Have to Have an Ism

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This is a lady who never got a break.

Shira Dances

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She feels the music deep in her belly,her hips swaying, she looks out through lids no longer guardedand sees you, Her knees bend, her eyes close, She is moving back and forth,a pulse in time,Her arms snake around her head,She does not ask,may I enjoy myself?…

THE MOON, THE SUN, AND RYAN W. BRADLEY (not quite a fortune-telling)

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“That’s just Ryan W. Bradley—son of a bitch knows better by now.”

Considering a Career

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Mostly, though, reiteration of the old/ in an idiosyncrasy that strives/ to become fresh and fails

Lockdown

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I'm explicating Emily Dickinson when the alarm starts: three long, two short. Lockdown mode. Only there was nothing in the staff bulletin about a drill. So I tell the students to get down on the floor, away from the window. I open the classroom door and lock it from…

Toy Universe

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She crossed the room to a tub in the center, the great woman with flowing locks of bronze, turning the taps until a heatless white became warm enough to bathe in. She added soap of some kind and the light became the bubbles,…

Dad, August 10, 2010

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Satchmo sings a love song over the sound system. People read books, tap keyboards, drink coffee, eat cake. In Barnes & Noble—more a coffee shop these days than a bookstore—I am thinking about my dad and his stomach cancer.The terror he…

A Sometimes Niggling Notion

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A po'm

Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 4

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They gave Lee a bunch of morphine in the ambulance and he came to vaguely, murmuring shit about God and mermaids.

Cogito Zero Sum

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When you encounter a body laying on the road, drive over it.

Big Money in Poetry!

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Perhaps you have heard the rumors of big money in poetry Maybe that’s why everybody is writing it these days Even Emily Dickinson must have heard these rumors Myself, I suspected as much 50 years ago And started early to accumulate my hoard of poe

Shana (Refuse)

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Papa said he'd be in the stands watching: section H, 5th row, seat 35. During warmups, she had looked, during stretches, she had looked, but she had stopped looking right before the race."Don't worry about me," he had said. "Focus on the race," so when the man had said on…

I Wish I Could Say This to Your Face

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The day you came home, after three extended tours in Afghanistan, I wanted to welcome you at the bus station, but I was afraid you'd attach yourself to me again.

Rush

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Rush had a black eye and a bucket of dirty water. Look, a baby turtle he said, like that explained everything. Yes, I did lack a turtle so thank you for disappearing for three months and returning with a goddamned turtle. His weird homecoming gift took my…

Lost In Space

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He was jolted awake from his light slumber by his pod crash landing. Landing? That means he found a planet. He opened the pod and got out to stretch his legs. He looked around. "Wow, and I thought Aleria was advanced. This is amazing."

Vera's Nemesis

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The dog was there before Vera was there, so she supposed she couldn't hate it too much. It wasn't like she had to live with the thing, either, though she might as well have hosted it in her ear for the eight months it took that particular batch of neighbo

In the Alley

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as i sink down into the shadows crawling like a worm past cold bricks centuries old in my blood

You Atop Franz Josef Glacier, Twelve Miles From the Tasman Sea

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58 words

Gods Sense of Humor (April Fools Challenge)

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I wonder, God. Do you sit around and play with the universe like it was your Wii? Or your Farmville? Or maybe your little iphone app? I mean, really. Did it ever occur to you that the little men, women and children on your screen actually bleed? Do you think…

Four Stories I Cannot Write

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“Per­haps instead of a book I could write lists of words, in alpha­bet­ical order, an ava­lanche of isol­ated words which expresses the truth I still do not know” — Italo Calvino albu­men before child grit secretlyshame august blood …

Low Tide

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Her whole life was lived between high tide and low tide, moments of giggling grandeur and moments of sheer emptiness.

Snake Walk

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The Viper turns so quickly that Father's grabbing hand now faces its head instead of its tail.

Blind

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My mother saw the Devil everywhere, even in my dance teacher, with his black leotards and chest hair like bean sprouts. "You're flamingos," he'd say in class when we balanced on one foot; when we lept into the air, "Now you're panthers!" I pictured him in a dark robe,…

Conversation on Thanksgiving

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“You always use that as a crutch. You, a sixteen year old girl. The way you were…” She looked at me, shaking her head, looking at my body as if remembering some wrong, some thing that should not have been.

Our Graves

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But no matter how we died, we all end up here, in the Meadowlark Children's Cemetery.

Feets You Fail Me

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San Bruno avenue, six shops in eight blocks. Those Vietnamese ladies thrive on the pedicure trade.

Pretend

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Molly was a F***ing Tourist

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The boys drank in one room. The girls in another. Always the same, no matter the letters. Greek Letters. Shabby sofa on the burnt-out lawn.

Wet Work

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blinking out

Educating an American

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Note to self: look up Bobby Sands.