Shhh. I am here. Otillie Augustine, from Trieste, an Italian city to you, but when I lived it was part of Austria. Such things as who flies their flags over a city? Not so important after all, after all the losses and the victory speeches. These were not…

Poetry is conceit; emotional, intellectual or technical.

I never took more than a few pills at a time, just enough for a treat on Friday night.

I am exceeded / by a leaf

I wonder if regular nonfashion clothes are out forever, if these kids will ever dress normally like, you know, Phil Donahue, again.

I'm waiting for your voice. My trembling hand is so damp the phone could slip from my fragile grasp at any moment. Each ring burns in my ear and makes the washing machine in my stomach tumble faster and faster. After three rings, or it could be four, or forty, I hear…

“Tell me a story,” he said, toying with his top hat, running his fingers along its brim.

I await, here at Sandymount Strand / There's a stony bed and moistened sand / Couples dance away into futurity / With their dogs upon the shore

Colton nods, without words, understanding the significance of every word that the Old Man has uttered, knowing that in the end, given enough time, we all go down that lonely corner, to embrace the darkness, wishing to be cured of our sentiments.

A white room is empty but for you, a card table and a chair.

"That zit on your forehead just won't go away, will it, sweetie?" she adds as she brushes her daughter's bangs downward.

It's become sort of a habit now when Elsie's husband is away on business two or three times a month that we take the afternoon off and drive nine miles across the river to Marginalia, Arkansas and the Moonglow Motel with its red, neon vacancy sign and although to some, two…

All these poets with their wrinkled hands full of freshly poured over poems are driving me into the dried wheat fields like a black block of crows. Offering a collectable cigarette, they light the damned thing with another hand-rolled poem,…

Start white flour diet.

At night, he saw the commercial, the same one every time: the Watson’s girl, mascot for her father’s pool, spa, and billiards business. The Watson’s girl was a veteran at this, the same one from his youth, the one whose heart-shaped face and cleavage the