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two hendecasyllabic verse notes for Mr. S.

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mind heart soul will blood sweat tears muscle, and bone,/and then always something else—not more, just else . . .

Bardo

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In the quiet dark, fathers reappear.

The Prince of Beers

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“All I want,” he was heard to say, “is a date with a really good-looking woman before I go away.”

Fourth Time’s a Charm

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We wait for a server to bring our coconut cream pie. His favorite. I hate coconut.

Parallel Structures

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He gave her his driving range and she gave it back. She didn’t know what a bogey was. Arms akimbo he smiled and licked the China cat by the window.

sunburn

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I used to compare her to a sunburnthe first of the summerit is always the worst oneexposed skinalmost hot to the touchturning warm and pinkthen raw and redit is a transition that is effortlessbut still you can feel it happeninga lot like loveyou can feel it all around…

marsha and the white rabbit

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a white rabbit with a dirty monocle and a straw hat regarded marsha from the grass at the edge of the mud.

Deviance

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I tried to enlighten them. For my trouble, they tried to have me deprogrammed. I condemned their narrowness of mind; they pitied me my naiveté. I ridiculed their religious bourgeois complacency, but they really didn’t know what I was talking about.

Refugio Beach

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We can’t see anything except for glimpses of the other’s eyes, hands, mouths when we move.

Juicy | In the Umbra

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He licks his lips and mouths the air, salivating, unashamed of his propensity for the round, pink grapefruit, the almost egg-shaped oranges, the firm, juicy tangerines.

Old Photograph Stuck Between Documents

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I spent the evening looking at our old pictures. / We were never happy. I realize that now.

The Madness of Mass Dance

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Outbreaks of mass communal dancing—sometimes referred to as “choreomania”—occurred in Europe with some frequency in Europe between the 14th and the 18th centuries.

Of Roses and Hyacinths

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The blooms are practical/ and cannot see themselves

Brief excerpt from the Fantasy thing I'm writing.

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Lucien Lucien Tidesquall lay almost sleeping amid the soft green grass. His eyes irradiated green midnight under vanquished brows. A plover hovered somewhere in the distance. It reminded him of a poem he had written as a teenager, a haiku that went as…

It's My Birthday

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and the President didn't call.

For all we know, we'll never meet again...

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Jillian speeds across the stone wall, the hem of her dress flaps violently behind her. Sometimes she stands with her back fully erect letting perpetual motion guide her down a bend with her sun blonde locks brightening the dreary sky, or she lurches her

Cat Haikus

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You have more names Than a Spanish grandee. Your lives I’m too envious to count.

Convenience

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I drove all night, but there weren’t nothing Roy Orbison about it. I’d been driving and around lunchtime I just thought I might stop by Shona’s place.

I Am the Cheap Man

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I considered my choices, then asked the question that has brought my wife so much pain over the years. "Which is cheaper?"

Alfamadog

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It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…

Hey, Boys, Bandits!

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I remember one time that summer I was with you (1964) going to a bar in maybe it was Melrose Park, or Northlake, or somewhere along Roosevelt Road closer to Chicago, not as far as Cicero though. I went there with a crazy gear-head named Roger Hudson, wh

Max Beckmann Poem

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the unutterable things of this world

Having

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I guess it was, you know, a daze thing: He, lightly drunk, turning red in parts of his head, in his cheeks mostly, and his chest, to which my eyes were drawn because of his v-neck douchebag shirt; and I, sleepy beyond belief, sustained like a zombie only

Zero

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The arithmetic of human experience/ is always a losing game for some. Poor Jane. Rich Dick.

Ready to Go

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Where the fuck are my keys?Where the hell is my phone?Where the fuck are my keys?Where the hell is my phone?Where the fuck are my keys?Where the hell is my phone?Where the fuck are my keys?Where the hell is my phone?Where the fuck are my keys?Where the hell is my…

OUR NEXT BREAK

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You welcome the new girl by putting a message on her back. I breathe harder until she pops or until you ask me what I’ve seen or until you see my hand turn into a fist.

Shaken not stirred

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The warmth of the sun

The Rider

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"The rider rode his bike in Arizona just about every day and for all the usual reasons....."

We're The Atwoods

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I remember a time when Calvin, my husband, was like Winnie the Pooh and I was a jar of fine Provençal honey. No amount of my sweetness could satisfy his craving for me. He would spread me on his toast with butter at breakfast and mix me with peanut butter

Lapidary

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You burnish what is left until it shines and call it your own.