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Esmée

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Esmée sat alone at a table on the terrace at Marina Jack’s in Sarasota. She had been there ten minutes and no waitress had approached her.

Gentleman Freddy

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Roanne, just out of jail, went to cop. That is, she went to beg fat little Freddy the dopeman to front her once more. She'd have to fuck Freddy, of course, but, well, maybe he'd wait until after this time. Likely not…

Rest

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What do I understand? What have I mastered or come to terms with?

To a Young Atheist & Intellectual with Dior Glasses

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You have such a complicated mind / for refusing to believe in God / just like any damned liberal / whose fingerprints / crowd the faces of a thousand / dollar bills / being passed around your great nation...

Jeremy

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My name is Jeremy, and I am in love with a zombie.

Easter: A Non-Fiction.

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Then I found myself in the water.

Forbidden Music

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There are songs I know to not listen to when I am alone.

The Fact of the Matter

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Jeanne and I were married for eight years. I never knew her.

And so, like a kind of molting

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So for now, let the snow fall, but let it fall gently, each flake as a soft piano note

Word Burglar

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Oh my god - A plagiarizing pony - I know someone must have said that before

First Rain of the New Year

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Compartments trickle together/ in light diffuse and unreliable./ Fortify yourself against the day.

Esmeralda

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Being an uncredited bonus composition, written in the sublimest access of divine afflatus this poet believes his lyric verse has ever known. “In olden times, dark was not counted fair”: Those were the words, I think, of some old poet. …

Lucky Strike

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...when they entered eager lungs hungry from deep and sweaty love

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

Doll Parts

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She’s always had one foot on a pedestal and the other in a gutter.

Straight to Jimbo

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...coming into that bone yard, you just hang a right, go on past La Fontaine, and take a left a bit further on. Jimbo's right up in there.

Condensation on the Glass

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Condensation on the Glass Riding down 22, I'm looking out the window. Time is a whirlwind. Your memory relinquishes itself, yellowed and fraying at the edges. It's raining and cold. I make a smiley face in the condensation …

Come to the Park

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Come to the park and swing with me, sing with me.

Blackouts

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The Bird King is trapped behind the mirrors. Sometimes you'll see a hand, a wing, fluttering in a dark space. You may even see his breath, a pulse of mist in a corner of the glass. But don't ever smash his silvered prison. Don't ever let him out and into the world.*****O…

Jane

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Jane knew what to do when she heard murmurs in the ceiling, knew what to do when she struck out on the moor.

Fifteen

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“We could dooble date,” he said.

In my day...

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In my day, you could buy a polythene bag of cigarette butts for 5p. And everyone had a proper haircut.In my day, plumbers gave free vasectomies whilst reciting patriotic poems. And all the buses were red.In my day, there was always more than enough sex to go round, with…

Eternal Return

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When I slip through the seams I return to the same place.

Honey Gold

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your light is gonna last me through the week

Street plan for a story

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But behind the shops (and the many pubs), at the back of the narrow cottage fronts which line the wynds are secret courtyards, surprising gardens and more light than ever imagined.

The Planetary Phosphorescent Horses

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sprang straight up to their full galloping heights roaming over your hills like constantly shifting eyes, your strange approximated illuminating hair like ghosts giving birth to a tender smell of green sea foam. This was all I saw, but it was quite…

In an Unfamiliar Restaurant.

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I find myself in an unfamiliar restaurant, its cuisine an uncomfortable pastiche of Croatian, Burmese, Jamaican and leftovers of long ago Sunday dinners in a small New England town.

Queen Jane Redux

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The laptop has ruined the sanctity of the library. And so I get up and go see Queen Jane.

Linear A

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let’s press our words into the clay/ in language so completely dead/ we have to re-imagine it.

Building Houses Out of Words

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I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …