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Bloody Knuckles

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My tongue kept me from fitting in with the latinos. I understood little Spanish and spoke even less. No one really believed I was Mexican, and they kept me at a distance. Or maybe I kept them at a distance. Living with

Whirl

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Wanna,wanna, whoop de loop. Hold my baby, kiss my mom, dance the way I used to do. Desktops, blacktops, cut and paste, speed down hills, learn the rules, Sister Saint Marion, married to Christ. Sixteen, life-green, pink tights, Swan Lake, an…

Xs and Os

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Momma pointed out our paintings on the walls, the signs we had learned, but when Daddy saw our friends, their wheelchairs, braces on their legs, he left...

Off the Grid

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The slicing is easy. Blade barely touching skin, flesh separating into two clean parts. A breath, and blood fills in the space, an old friend materializing in the shadows. I am redolent with hope and desire. I can't stop thinking of how he excised himself from my…

No Alternative

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Ballspenden

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Even if you're doing it together, there's no unity when everyone's dancing to their own tune.

After Prometheus

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His method is simple...

A Night In a String Of Long Nights

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Whatever innocence Michelle had brought to the game was long gone, even the part where she dreamed she was the star of a righteous, asskicking movie.

The Bedbugs

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Cockroaches in bed was the last straw. Alicia was sure she’d swallowed one in the middle of the night . . .

December 1, 2016

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Polite society will cheer/ as another body is discovered// and disposed of. The cheers/ will drown out the gasps

Privileged

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I could hide away in this tower But I am Rapunzel And I will let down my hair

The Human Resource

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I am a human resource, batteries not included

Wintering

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Winter makes me reconsider.

The Lookout

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I had never seen anyone die. For first time in my life, I was afraid, even more than when my step-dad got drunk and roughed me up. When Dale Franklin got shot last year standing on the corner outside the laundry-mat it took the ambulance forty-five minu

Four Sieges

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Nicole knows that Deirdre is winding up for the weekly pitch, practicing the line in her mind.

Size Times New Roman

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“I’m making a dress,” she said, feeding the pages through the sewing machine. He didn’t know how to answer. “Are those my books?”

Malaise

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Endurance wears the soul thin.// The hour to succumb ticks ever closer.

His Nightmares

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Motionless seconds turned

She Called My Poem Nice

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“There is no future in art, you will not change lives with flowery words. Please don’t rock the boat”

Cougar

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What follows is one of those moments, though to some people, it would seem a fantasy, perhaps a "Wizard of Oz" era tale.

Context and Confessional Poetry

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I like babies and little kids, more than some people but goddamn, children's laughter out of nowhere (in the night, when you're not expecting it) is creepy. I don't like slugs smeared like nightmare goo on my summer-bare feet, I could do without them in …

Hardware Store Tour

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The Plaza had a chess-board floor, green wood booths, and the lights stayed up. I might be combining a memory of Fitzie's in Binghamton. The Plaza felt like a preppy soda fountain with beer.

For Fathers Day 2014

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Divine guidance. That's why Dad used a blowtorch to set the jug on fire, its contents the “Devil's elixir.”

My Dad was a ditch digger

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men sitting on stoops women earning the rent by working as servants in the rich folks yard

On the Empire Builder

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Naked American Apparel models romp with elk and antelope, and the Ghost of Richard Nixon directs traffic with the grace of a Wounded Hyena.

Ghostbusting

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Jill's number was flashing on Carol's caller ID. Jill, the baby sister she had practically raised after their mother died of a stroke when Carol was 12. It had been months since they'd talked. Jill had been avoiding Carol because Jill's idiot husband Mark…

Beverly Abbey

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Downton Abbey and The Beverly Hillbillies. They're practically the same show.

The Cake Forest

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They look like amateur beavers, all twenty-seven of them on their knees, gnawing through frosting bark. My wife is taking notes on a huge purple flower, listening to the kids as they shout out what tree corresponds to what flavor.

If You Want To Work At Club Arseni

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I hev my girls shave.

Radical Middle-Aged Cake Acceptance

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Cake is not the enemy.