| 1359  5  4   
 | before your full lips touch
mine. | 
		
		
			| 1359  12  9   
 | I was at the doctor's office, having my blood  drawn. I was talking to the medical assistant. She was tying off  my arm to tap my vein. She was almost 8 months pregnant with a girl,  though her belly stuck out straight in front of her enough to be told she was having a boy.… | 
		
		
			| 1359  3  2   
 | Some claimed seeing him that first time in the  grocery store staring in at the pints of Haagen-Dazs, his breath fogging the  glass as his head rested against the heavy freezer doors, stinking in his  Sasquatch suit. The second time he was… | 
		
		
			| 1359  4  2   
 | Better not hand me that iPhone. I'll look up every damned thing in it. | 
		
		
			| 1358  0  0   
 | I don't like listening to the radio anymore. Nothing is clearer than a live voice with something to say. Give me a big field with no one around but the birds and I will send the bees away from me. I will deny all bugs to buzz. | 
		
		
			| 1358  9  8   
 | "Sara, do you taketh it with your eyes?" | 
		
		
			| 1358  6  3   
 | someone left graffiti on the billboard 
over: "God's a hard 
act to follow"; the one that made the news
 | 
		
		
			| 1358  1  1   
 | our eyes misted white as goatskin | 
		
		
			| 1358  2  1   
 | Up top, the sky is like a fist fight-
fat lip purple and bitchslap pinks get wilder as the tabs kick in.
Those hovering lights are aliens!
we assert with insistent like-mindedness
from where we sit directly beneath the airport flight path. | 
		
		
			| 1358  13  12   
 | Let's say maybe you're in a place your mind has never left, and let's say maybe it's Mississippi, and let's say maybe it's summer with kudzu throbbing green all around you, and let's say maybe she's a Sagittarius girl, standing in that driveway with her young breasts… | 
		
		
			| 1358  1  1   
 | Winter in Phoenix  Arizona   happens in July.  An overgrown lawn is working   its way up onto  The sidewalk.  And then there's you with your mower,  A hidden newspaper in the middle of everything.  Snowflakes puff out from under  Spinning blades.  You hover   above like… | 
		
		
			| 1358  1  1   
 | There are problems we lovingly fashion . . . | 
		
		
			| 1358  7  6   
 | Steven was a hollow tree of a man — outwardly normal for a tired fortysomething, but empty inside. He lived alone in an old farmhouse that reeked of decomposition and Lysol, the previous tenant having left a dozen skinned raccoon carcasses in the attic. | 
		
		
			| 1358  17  10   
 | my family's Scottish heritage | 
		
		
			| 1358  6  4   
 | I allow myself one hour every two weeks.  Devoting 335 of my 336 hours to her and the kids is beyond dutiful. 
 | 
		
		
			| 1358  3  1   
 | What follows is one of those moments, though to some people, it would seem a fantasy, perhaps a "Wizard of Oz" era tale. | 
		
		
			| 1358  7  4   
 | Each memory of Fall reminds me of the harvest;    Surely this is not a thought to turn the thought of  dying.    Black the turning point, there is a glint at the tip  of the wing:    Perhaps it rises from its cinders as I wish when I  was waning,   … | 
		
		
			| 1358  12  7   
 |  | 
		
		
			| 1358  2  1   
 | The Syringimals were filled to their 60 ml capacity with a gelatinous ocher blood. They fluttered around using sparkly wings stolen from Disney fairies, and attempted language through wax lips that were usually secured with scotch tape. | 
		
		
			| 1358  13  12   
 | We discussed the epic poems/
and agreed to write a new one. | 
		
		
			| 1358  7  5   
 | I was tired and lonesome when I checked into another insufferable, shop-worn Holiday Inn. It was the only motel around with the internet — dial up only — in that little jerkwater town, Notmuch, Alabama. It was too late for a nap, so I jumped in the shower,… | 
		
		
			| 1357  1  1   
 | No chance for Hallo, we sank into an unlit station doorway and he fumbled through my shorts.  | 
		
		
			| 1357  5  3   
 | "My ex Maxine claimed red wine was the healthy alcohol choice. When we were married and I still had money she drank the expensive stuff, as if drinking Chateau Montrose 2005 instead of two buck chuck made her any less of a wino. She would have been better | 
		
		
			| 1357  0  0   
 | “Devil’s Pass.” It had the highest rate of vehicle fatalities per year in the entire State of Colorado. Everyone in my state drove like a bunch of stupid rejects, so I asked the guy just how many? He replied,
 “Four thousand for the entire state!...Nin | 
		
		
			| 1357  0  0   
 | The day Eugene told me his secret he gave me a bouquet of lilies. Ice clung to the petals like fuzz. Sorry about the frost, he said. That was an accident. | 
		
		
			| 1357  1  0   
 | In the last test Anna barely managed to stay within the limit, but right now she had problems with her father in law who’s been luring her husband into alcohol, and with her husband who’s been luring the father in law into drugs. | 
		
		
			| 1357  12  1   
 | Henry Ground was a healthy and well adjusted English man who excelled at chess and folk dancing. One day, for no apparent reason, he decided to fill his guinea pig with helium. He carried the animal under the light of the stars into the shed at the bottom of his garden.… | 
		
		
			| 1357  13  8   
 | In his inexpert mouth they drone/
mechanically along without the lilt/
or cadence of an Irishman/
or Englishman or German.  | 
		
		
			| 1357  2  2   
 | Beautiful boy! I am doomed / to have attended your presence; / time consumes us, but you / have changed so little... | 
		
		
			| 1357  1  2   
 | My brother used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them .. 
 |