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sunflower 15

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“plain before my eyes” said he eyes swathed in bandages covering sight oozing yellow fluid is this life thought i

Deity

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On this day, a blinding sky holds ribbed reams of clouds, staccato against staggering blue.

Assiduity Twenty Six

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Uzma and Luv are . . .

Standards

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All I ask is that the guy has teeth and an income. More important are the teeth because he can always get a job, but he can’t un-rot the teeth he’s lost to meth.

Anniversary

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He honestly could care less.  We should converse, you and I, he says. All right, she says.  She lays down the baster in her drawn out way, heel to toe on the countertop, one step in a…

Hold My Hand

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Billy Joel wants to hold my hand.

My Own Gun

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“What's a slut?”

eggs

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i ask you what i taste like and you say "not much."

Three Winter Sketches in Honor of the Vernal Equinox

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an almost perfectly symmetrical/ Cheshire grin of a moon tonight/ above the iced roof of the house

THERE IS NOTHING MORE HONEST THAN PAIN

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My parrot Poe freezes when a crow soars outside the window the same way I do when you approach my door. You come knocking late at night. What do you want this time? I yell. To come in you say, please. Go the fuck away, I respond but you keep…

When Will the Poetic Violence End?

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Some corners of the world seem to be consigned to an eternal hell of never-ending strife. The Middle East; Northern Ireland; the faculty lounge at Oxford University.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 44

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The butterscotch on that painting makes me want to lick the canvas.

In Memoriam

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One by one, cars filed into the cemetery, pelted by the summer rain under a gun-metal sky. The procession moved slowly, a series of brake lights and headlights, too close together, too far apart; there were sedans and SUVs, mini-vans and pick-up trucks, shiny new vehicles…

Precisely

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Is it my imagination, or is her chair afraid of her?

Filaments

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It's always dark when Cal and I arrive. We park under the bright sodium lamps, closest to the doors. The lights will probably be off by the time we return, unless the sensors miscue in the uncertain light of early morning. When that happens, the lights…

The Avenues Of Occupation And Other Short Stories

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A vanishing of something we never got to see. All we've been left with are impressions, imaginings

Struggle for Life

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7.53Another morning ritual. Trying to fill the loose ends of time in the early morning is a task.7.54I've done about everything, too early to work and too late to go back to sleep. 7.55Trying to avoid the nausea of life at all cost. My mind is a snakepit, filled with…

Sauna

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The arid paramour, your breath is hot, dry, cedar. I sweat you corpus fluids and salt and the unnamably impure.

Snap

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An eternity in a crashing moment.

Abby

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The music is too loud in here and it's hurting my ears. I know some of the words to the songs because my older sister listens to the same stuff when she's in her bedroom and is playing her iPod and my dad yells at her to turn that crap down. I like my dad. He calls me…

The Business of Shadows

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The flowerpots across the street from Frank’s room at the Place d’Armes Hotel never appeared parched by the late August sun.

red lights alone

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before five/glancing down Academy Street/sloping west to where the tracks crossed/twisted tangled metal on wheels.

But You Said

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A decade, at minimum, was how long their notes had transpired.Still, they all knew how it would end.

Love Poem

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I need to be not sure

The Cat Pulls No Sudden Punches

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and springs its ready-made claws into action and takes a soppy chance that things will probably go its feline way today. But you, my friend, must you always throw the testing switch to high voltage on me? Yeah I get that the history teachers…

Silly Old Man Acting the Young Fool

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The green on your shoulder Is worth all their papery property taxes And then some. They cash in every friendship As if it were nothing more than a Ripened apple for pie. Get rid of The thing before it begins to Rot into some…

Lazy River Blues, or Stuck Between a Couple of Exposed Roots and an Endlessly Restless Shore

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Our Sun bites down on the eager yet pouting lips of the softly puffy looking moon, but a jealous & runny cloud interferes with this story line just long enough for a little bit of fun: a young dancing tree washes her gold and…

Reading Without an ISBN

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The goal is to perform along with Jason Lee Norman--who is touring with his book of very short stories called Americas--a selection from my own collection called Country Without a Name. The symmetry excites me.

Lake Erie on a Monday Night

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As if I should have expected better of it.

The Donkey

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Since dawn doesn't understand my words, I will give them to the donkey, finely cut for him, let them ferment some time and add a few sprigs of lucerne. The donkey grazes in the meadow down the road and always welcomes me with a grin that displays his mauve gums and his…