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Walking on Water

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After his chemotherapy failed, he went water skiing.

The Stranger I : Vic's

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The location : Vic's Seedy Space Bar. No, that's not just a description, that's the real name.

don't let the flames chase you away

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my maddening pyromaniac,/ you're burning up my heart/ so open up your broad-toothed mouth/ and let me pour the ashes in.

Pals

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There was a body in the backseat, and they drove through the highways at night to a late night radio show that played 80’s power ballads. He said: “I am really glad you’re here for me.”

The Masquerade

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Atlanta, 1990The night we almost died,crushed at a one-hit wonder concert,comes back to mewhen the club announces it's closing.An ancient excelsior millturned industrial dance hall,I spent three years mapping every dark corner, finding secret places for sex and…

Impotent

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A spire that had stood one hundred and forty years fell in a single second of the blackest day.

Male Pattern Invocation

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in the much more terrorizing display/ of male pattern stupidity// as seen so often on TV/ in the House and at Fox News.

Diary

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Ivan was used to explosions, but this was high in the sky. He was on his back between tall sunflowers that grew infinitely in all directions. The blast made the flowers bow their heads. Bits of debris fell from the blue sky, some shiny, trailing fire or smoke. The boy…

Bethlehem

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I dragged you that last half mile Me such a slip of a thing, one bite mark visible You the bear, your growl now only audible When you furred from kerb to road to kerb The December snow followed us Dragging Christmas red behind you As I ignored my…

Honeymoon Bike Ride

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On my honeymoon, we went upstate to the Catskill Mountains.

The Star... an excerpt from The Exile of Gaspar

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The night is very clear and unusually cold. We are so near to the star that its light banishes the darkness that tries futilely to extinguish it. A small village twinkles in the foothills to our east. The cry of a lost sheep cuts the night like a blade

The Way Home

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Her back turned, she wanders off searching for the way home wringing her hands, trying to think, but thoughts evade her.

1958-1961

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In those years, you and I were told to leap for a world suffused with sound and industry.

Forbidden Fruit

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After my vasectomy, I got a T-shirt with a picture of an orange on it. It said "All Juice, No Seeds."

Fealty

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I wander toward the midnight dock a neon sine curve stabs my eyes

Facsimile in Boots

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There she is. A paper doll of me. The dress, the lilt, the self-hatred. The crowd thins and swells in want of a scene. Conversations begin, pretend, then halt. My gin and tonic sweats into my hand and I lick at the…

Morning Sounds

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Morning sounds

A Lot of Things to Tell You (from FATHER MUST)

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How long have you been waiting for me? How long?

We All Fall Down

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I didn’t give her enough skin. The world will always hurt her.

chicken coup

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" I have no idea what's goin on out here, and I'm gonna find out one way or another."

Two poems

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I cut myself. Often. The bloodslice like thin lips parted/in prayer. life’s color drained to ashen/as the old world spins, pirouettes/like a circus dog on the back/of a galloping horse.

Or

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I paid the doctor / You paid the doctor

But It's Been a While

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When I first met Luther he was sitting on the sidewalk, his back pushed up against a vacant storefront wall, thumbing through the “help wanted” section of a few-days-old copy of our local paper and I was moved to offer him a couple of dollars for which he said,…

Caster Knox

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Caster had always imagined the Consensus as a big room, as big as the world, filled with white space and people with quantum wings, flitting about, creating information. There were tinted bubbles for people to share for privacy, and the lights never went

The White Dogs Of West Emerald Street

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I wondered if Mr. Slane even knew/ how many dogs he owned

Salem the Dead

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My father's cousin is Salem the Dead. Famed, an infant Lazarus of Libya, he was brought lifeless from the womb, yet awoke to the chill of a mortuary slab.

House

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I sat in the dark, mashing damp sand like clumps of brown sugar into my palm while the heavy Gulf air blew my hair into ropes. Sometimes I worried that I was unable to need people, but, as much as the thought upset me, I couldn't make myself truly want t

The Small Blue House

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She allowed him to wash her hair. Touching it in a wet state, running his hands through it in a soapy state, wringing the water out when he was finished—he was ecstatic.

Oh, Baby!

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One of the drunk men, a dear friend, hunk, as he updated me, now living the existence of a poet, called from San Francisco to say he would take the plane to Minneapolis, do it, then leave me to raise the baby.

New World

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The flash of love was real, the life within her was real, and the main thing now was to climb.