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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."

The Eleventh Brother, After the Swan

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I turned a maiden to a witch / and back again

Me and Lord Byron at Last Call

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Byron's achievement, certainly quite remarkable, is to have raised the drunken monologue to a literary form. Edmund Wilson

As We Progress

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We all need a place to stay.

Five Breaths Or Less

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She flew through the air, linen skirt billowing around her. Below, her buckled bicycle was taking a different route. Less aerodynamic than she, its trajectory was brief, crashing into the ditch. Elspeth kept on flying. Time slowed, and expanded

Cobbler's Clinch

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“If Sir would observe, the storm welt, a shoe for the big occasion, a shoe that will guide sir through the dismal passages, a shoe that will roar in the face of adversity and …”

Candle Illumination

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Mint upon my palate, I rub sleep infused eyes and crawl under the covers. Oh blessed sleep, please descend upon this body and transverse this fatigue. Eyes closed, bring a wavering blackness upon subtle lids. The conversation begins…

The Hound - Part 3

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The bullet split her head in half before she could finish her sentence. Her blood sprayed out onto my face and covered my lips. The taste of life as it suddenly ended.

The Naming

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we name invasive species,

The girl laughing in the dictionary.

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Trigger Warning.

Sunflowers

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On that balcony, on every other day, she practised her other, more worldly religion - gardening, specifically sunflowers.

Three Teeth

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Three teeth. You can pick them out if you hit pause just right. Probably not a person in the entire valley who hasn’t seen that video from the Eastern Cheerleading Finals. They even showed the tape on the eleven o’clock news in Scranton, my face ci

War Then

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They were just boys, the Nazis I mean, young in their twenties, not much older than my brother Cyril.

Blackout

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The blackout lasted longer than anyone thought. From my fifth story window, the whole city seemed to shut down. I heard noises above me. How could it be?

Morning Sounds

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Morning sounds

Wintering

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Winter makes me reconsider.

Sniping

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Snipers wear camouflage clothing to avoid being seen. It wouldn’t do for a sniper to be seen because then the sniper might become the snipee.

a parable

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jaws blossoming with drool,/ a captured wolf slinks low/ across the crowded land/ for that most tender lamb/ to catch it by surprise.

The Invisible Woman

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"She saw they were absorbed in making faces at each other with a smartphone app that enlarged a mouth."

Two More Poems

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1. Weeds of the World (Unite!) We invade the invaders and they invade us, these little Blooming weeds. They raise five flowers and let them blow Into the winds like sheets of stars. All of us Steer by their turning tide. All of us will eventually …

my son

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his mother brought him to me/ when he was very young/ maybe a few months old,/ born in arizona july.

The Purple Prose of Cario

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I contemplate the words that did not make it; the lost ones. The words deprived of their moment in the sun. These words. These words that are not part of the story.

Chatter

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The night before his mother's teeth began chattering.

Batteries For Smoke Detectors

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Crack open the roof-- raise the battery on a platform with chains up into the lightning

Sand Dollars

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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.

news through a window

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TV and power cord valorized in dust,/ wires and digital guts unimpaired, I’d guess . . .

ace in the hole

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hookers are better educated these days

The Unlucky Thirteen

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They were working on the factory floor when they died, the auspices of mayhem filtering out to a host of ravens gleaning the neighboring fields. Clouds of them fled the scene around the time of the incident turning the day into twilight…

Manifesto

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I write poems.

Never Trust A Thief

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His looks were polished like his shoes, his hair as black. No one would have guessed he made his living as a thief.