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The poplar

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Sometimes we hurt ourselves, we scratch ourselves, we bleed — for a simple joy... All I wanted to do was to find the poplar again — the tree of my young arms, of my budding breasts. My fingers used to circle around its bold and vigorous waist, but in the…

QuaintAugust 2017

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

Jill Walks Across the Snow Covered Gas Station Parking Lot, Sits Next to Jack on the Curb and Gives Him a Cigarette

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Maybe adulthood isn't the destination I always thought it was?

Mirage

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the old once new me

Morning Night (2,3,4)

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Monday MorningI wake slowly. My breath still escapes me. He's asleep on the sofa, legs hanging, hand hanging, lips hanging, a river of saliva somewhere. He tries to be the one that's okay when I'm not, but really he's just as bloody as I am. I wait til he starts to…

Pitcher

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the shape only adhering

a small appliance man

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"Did you ever steal any money?" he finally asked. "Never. It was mostly toasters. There was the odd coffee maker or electric can opener ... but mostly ... toasters."

Unclear Antecedent (Uncl./Ant.)

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When I mentioned my visit to the museum during an A.A. meeting, I wanted to know whether the framers of The Big Book had been aware of the Nazi hospital sterilization and “euthanasia” programs.

Probability of Rain

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haiku

The Immunodeficiency Of Our Collective Hearts

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a set of 4 poems

Error Message

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Would you take a job living in a computer? What if you had to?

The Sun, the Trees, the Clouds, the Grass

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The sun was a dish of burnished courage

Winter Queen

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Love is

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…

Spain

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Where scenery is property and time is a straight edge; where the clouds are billowed and still; where one sees a tinfoil ocean and perspective to the east; where the static waves begin to move; where an immobile sky rustles and kneels. Our eyes looking still are the…

Unfinished Journal Entries (which only goes to prove just how unprofessionally untutored I am)

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I could tell you right nowwhat I'm thinking aboutbut that would not be sacrificeenough. Takes all kinds, and youonly listen when it'ssomething you think is instantlyoverpowering. I swear, there's always something not quiteright with you. There's a silly left…

A Waltz Viennese

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We made a plan to see each other to chat more and so we did. I went to his little house in the neighboring town and walked in to a kind of time warp. It was a large living room, made so by it's emptiness. It was stark in the vastness it seemed, but dark.

Change of Heart

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They pumped him full of electricity and waited.

The bookshelf

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I grew up in a little red house filled with books. Both of my parents love to read, and the proof piled up in every room. Current books in the bedroom. Books from the last ten to twenty years in the living room and kitchen. Old books from their childhood and college days on…

The Nature of Things

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She couldn't see what was actually there—the landscaping. All she could see were dollar signs, thousands of them suspended in mid-air, floating over each new plant, each well-placed sprinkler head, every curve of terraced orderliness on the hillside. She…

Bands

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Soccer Tease Nerdvana Ballsa Wood Pulp Friction Spam Folder Fetal Position Wayne Newton’s Yacht Late Bloomers Sir Real Geese

just plain Jerry

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I remember one afternoon when Terry and I did it in broad daylight in a nearby park in Lombard, or Glen Ellen. This was after we had broken up already and I was seeing Jolene, I think, before leaving to go out to my writing program at U.C. Irvine. It wa

CHINTZ PICKLE

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What if she doesn't take me seriously? My sweaty testimony wedged tight behind the tragic I used to think was honest? What if, right? What if . . . Isolation Real men feel that, right? They have …

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.…

The Art of Pizza

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He’d eaten every kind of pizza from the most sublime to the foulest.

Politicouscous II

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In which era was it not a scary world?/ Last century, the perils were both red and yellow/ after Jerry was undone. Now, they’re brown/ and cross, without respect, the Rio Grande

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…

No One Was Watching

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What happens in life when no one is watching?

Fate

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decline the prof­fered hand