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QuaintAugust 2017

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a midge smothered in the light of disarray crawls back into the sage

My Nashville Song

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I smell ham and biscuits I ain't eatin' Triscuits No more No more, no more Gonna get back on my Harley With my mutt named Bisquick Charlie I just ain't eatin’ Triscuits No more, no more And I heard you know the score Yeah, I know you

Between the Trees

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In his head the moment would have been different.

just because the maker of the tracks and the tracks themselves are invisible doesn't mean there's nothing there

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breathe out somewhere a tree falls

Please Do Not Blame Me

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I was disappointed with love, and like everyone else, stammered out of love into a place horrified with meaning.

Rock the Rhombi

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This is the place you need a third hand

Shell

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a wingover a dark sealooking up from what you're doingwhat you're not doinglooking upseeing what I don't seeor the same thingalteredwhen I was eightI cut my foot on a sea shellblood is red sea waterput a shell to your earyou'll hear your own bloodhowling in the night…

It is I, Hamlet, King of the Crabs

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Ronnie comes home carrying two sacks of groceries, one including a four-pack of Virgil's root beer. This is heavy stuff. It amazes me she is able to carry these items up our steep hill, nearly a mile in distance. I watch the news on our French cable station while she…

Confidence

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one day the words will form an order, one day the words will make a rhyme, one day the words will make a meaning

My Great Sensitivity

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I'm mucked now for sure. No one's going to discover my difficult poems in a locked away desk drawer somewhere after the dying fact. I remember how it feels to be knocked out by someone standing next to me in a simple white dress. This…

The Babies

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We jam into the green tent as it begins to rain. His casket is covered with flowers and there is the picture you took of him, the day you climbed the fire tower from where you could see forever, past his smiling face the bars and a million changing leaves.His pregnant girl…

Killing Joy

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In certain sense most fractured in each part, the whole Resolves itself more central, but I sense no calm In the cyclone's eye, the forest of the soul, Where plants this eidolon of poisoned charm. This is the secret of the hurricanes, reaping Out from…

We Are Not Just A Bit of Irrelevant Pollution

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"It's hard to make a man understand something if his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."--Upton Sinclair I understand what Zappa was saying,about broken hearts and assholes, but, well, reallywhat if yours is already broken and already…

Handicapping the Saints

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I've been a fan of hagiography—the lives of the saints—since first grade when Claude Dunham and I were asked to represent St. Stephen and St. Sebastian, two martyrs of the early church, in a tableau vivant of bored boys.

War Bride

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Maria met her husband in World War Two. Maria is now eighty-two. She is from the country of Tuscany. She has lived in may countries. She was a war bride. She has a son. Maria's son is sixty-three. As a baby-boomer he won't retire until sixty-five Maria says.…

Witness

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Someone must bear witness// at a comfortable remove.

Get Thee to a Nunnery

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I was in a nunnery wondering how I wound up in the midst of so many nuns as it wasn't my nature to hang out with nuns. I find them tedious and redundant, though I do have to say I appreciate their economy with words. You never really saw a…

Motorized Elderly Armageddon

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Oldies are not goodies.

Sycamore Tree

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I love you, I said. A beautiful smile struggled through the pain. But I love you more.

Admonition

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Let routine/ propel you through/ the day after/ the day before.

Portrait of a Dead Princess

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Extrapolate, interpolate/ to add imaginary flesh// to fragmentary bones.

What I know about love

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There are many forms of impossible love. For example when the rain soaked streets are littered with yellow leaves.When a fine mist hangs in the air, and it is twilight and you are not here

for want of water

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you shimmered me with attention

Lower-order Mammals

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they'd turned into humans overnight

The Boss

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When I was eighteenI worked at a convenient storeAnd the owner was from PakistanAnd he dressed well and Smelled of cologneAnd owned two storesAnd was always going back and forthBetween the two of themHe had to make sure we were doingOur jobsAnd whenever some kid…

She Looked In the Mirror And Saw Something Different

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Even raw as she looked coming out of the jail, the woman left echoes.

The Magic Dolls

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Trees gaining maturity that waited in the sun, in the bursting mornings and long afternoons, became restless now in new night textures. Sometimes the wind that came before the storm seemed to be intelligent, and follow some unseen but labyrinthine pathway. But now it…

Boolean Muteness

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I believe in scouring the sea with spears

Chimes of Coins or Branches

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It must be some sort of Freudian twist, but as her cold fingertips draw rings on my navel, I think of my mother. Here, her body watches my tongue, asking my lips to curl into the letters of her name. I can't get erect. I remember my mother's face—her eyes almost…

In and Out

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Emma held her arm up to John’s eyes. He looked, nodded. “My burns are on the inside,” he told her. “I’ll never show you.”