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Six Ways to Say Butterfly

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He repeated these six words like a prayer. His only confession.

Dozen

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strung from her window to a tree

A Place in the Sun

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What grabbed the mind when you heard about it was the way he did it.

THE RICH RIVER

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I must have been six years old at that time, but the events of…

Valhalla After Dark

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In traffic I cry bloody murder, but my bloodlust subsides once I'm in Valhalla. Chip Whitehead wants to see me on the 22nd floor before I start my shift. Charlie and the other suits have been looking at me funny since I sent Chip a memo suggesting the recession…

Let the Others Drool

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They are all sleeping, but I know better. I will keep watch and if he comes tonight I will be alert and ready. When he arrives he'll see the slack mouths, the graceless sprawls, hear the grunts, snorts and snores of the other women and then he'll sense me. My eyes will…

A Little Load of Paint

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Cézanne sags during a moment of paint. There is an umbrella in the room whose surface collects his thoughts. Outside, in the rain, the grass and garden smell strongly of spring. Fruit litters the table. Light through the window writhes in conversation with shape and…

Assiduity Six

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"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"

My Piper Laurie

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Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.

I’m Afraid You May Have Made Some

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awfully evil decisions upstairs in your head that could come back to haunt you in your later years;I'm here to report your zooming about hair isn't really one of them. You have found the infernal wheel works in all four directions at once. Good for you.…

Geode

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There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.

Owl, Glass, Deer

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He calls it an owl glass: he’s allowed: he’s six.

Beneath the Light of an Exploding City

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Under the darkness of their new city. The heave and moan of structures as they breathed and pulsed. Under the darkness of this city, under the hum of their florescent bulbs and the tumbling rattle of motorcars, the wheeze of their machines and the clank o

Kidz Love Klezmer

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The clarinet and the accordion are brothers, I see. Big, fat men with curly, klezmer hair.

we're already at the movies

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israeli flares light gaza/ casting incandescent nudity/ upon jumbled puzzle piece buildings.

My Name is William Hurt and I Am a Movie Star

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Not to sound too ridiculous, but Hurt was giving me the hurt, and it felt good.

Text Adventure

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Twenty-two tornadoes tore through Toronto, spiraling steel and stone to the streets where she stood, texting her best friend.

How Would Jesus Drive?

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Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.

Crossties

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Regrets lined behind him like crossties on a railroad track.

Smoke and Stars

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as distant lights all must shiver before joining in a Milky Way river

Neapolitan

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I wonder how many crumbs he can drop to make a cookie, whole, so I can relax a little and throw out the self help books about how I'm not right in the motherfucking head,

Seasonal Poem

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One of the poems in my collection, One Day Tells its Tale to Another, published December 16, 2012. Available on Amazon. My first book!

Kickstand

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Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.

Corkscrewing, Pt. II.

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Well, just put your hand on my knee, alone in my room, perv, unasked-and-unflirted for, go get a date, you coward, you limp-dicked male bitch . . .

IRON Meditations (thoughts while pressing a clean shirt for work)

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An yet we are all inmates...

WARNING: I Brake for Plastic Shopping Bags

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"...innocent butterflies of pollution trapped and entangled,"

Visions On The Beach

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I walked along the beach today, and there I saw them all; including the latest lost: little Tiven, Tommy, Michaela & my Paul. Grandma painted at her easel, set upon the dune. Uncle Eddie bent in half, laughing like a loon, Oliver growled…

Samantha’s Note to Her Husband

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By February, I had decided, That you'd tear out my throat every morning if it meant your favorite song would play from my neck.

Say What

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Jane says to Roy, “What are you doing, Roy?”“Fuck off, Jane, I'm reading,” says Roy.“Well you could have just said so.”“I did.”“I mean just without—”“Yeah, well fuck off anyway.”“I've had…

I Am Speckles the Clown

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Food is silly. Eating is silly. Yet the camaraderie of sharing a table is not silly. It is sacred. It becomes silly when the jello arrives.