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POTATOES

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The hospital was a welcome relief. A short ambulance ride, a nice man holding your arm in a make-shift tourniquet, the red sirens flashing and screeching. Then you were…

The Pain of Memory

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It's awfulYou remember everythingYou never forgetEvery insultEvery bruiseEvery scarEvery burnEvery nickEvery blow You never forgetI never forget The pain of memoryYou think you forgetBut you never forgetThe dread of some wholly misfortuneThe pain that left you…

"No lights shine out tonight high hung in heaven"

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(From Postcards fom a Railway Station (final poem)) No lights shine out tonight high hung in heaven: And the constellations like a dead man fall. No sight of polar eyes, whose sons are seven, And I stand unthinking and beyond it all I own it all a…

Lemon Citron

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Here it comes at long last. We just can't do it like that again. We don't have the same time. But something's wanting something more to be more than this. Here it comes again. But you bailed on me the last time around. Went silent as a…

Kicking Out the Enjambs

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I can be iambic when I want to / be!

truth be known

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It could be there is a little me, somewhere, truth be known. One time in Laguna Beach I slept with a girl I met at this café, the Jolly Roger, I think, when we went back to my apartment and had unprotected sex. She said she was on the pill, but you neve

Bob the Builder

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The concrete guy’s truck is parked in front of your house. There’s nothing for him to be doing there except your wife.

Banger in the Hanger

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song

Walking My Lobster Back Home

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Gee but it’s great after being out late, Walking my lobster back home. There’s little risk that she’ll turn into bisque, Walking my lobster back home.

Cottontail Morning

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A murder of bunnies nibble the St. Augustine,

How the Other Half Lives

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Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

Feast

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His long black lashes stir, flutter a wink. His eyes catch yours through the dark reflection of your face, illuminated from beneath by wavering candlelight. Reflection obscures his features; they become yours.

Florence, of Irvine

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she said, point blank, “Can you help me? I need a lover, and a friend.” “I can be both,” I said. I don’t know, I just opened my mouth and out it flew. You don’t even stop to think what you might be saying at a moment like that. I mean, she knew I was s

The 27 Club

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Jimi, Jim, and Janis Kurt and Amy too They died and gone to heaven And fit inside a shoe Room 114’s where they lie Their eyes wide open

nestled in swirling chaos; pineal pinecone

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Both my Nana and my mother have blond hair…as a child I thought most women of European descent tended towards this color, this particular hue of straw, and threads of gold woven together. I had been somewhere as a nine year old, I…

The Affair

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Mine lasted 90 days. But don't they all? After we made love the first time, it was early November, I remember, some internal part of me shot upward with a laughter that would not stop. Something…

I Love a Man Who Whistles

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“Hey! You can’t be whistling on Greyhound,” the bus driver said, looking up in the rearview mirror.

Memoirs from a Book

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I know you want to hold me. I won't break. I love you. Your hands - when they caress me are soft and gentle. My words speak only to you. They speak of love and of how we spend…

Jasika by the Mountain

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There was the small wooden structure near the base of the mountain. It had weathered many storms and its walls talked about the scars of this. In the hills to the west various cries came out from feral animals that seemed to go linger that autumn. But it had been a…

Kraken

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A likeness borne in silk, rich contours of canvas giving life to the seascape.

Puppet On a String

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Spring break that year, (1963) I spent nearly every minute with Lynda. Her taste for sex was unquenchable once we’d gotten started. We did it in every position possible. The sitting position in the front seat of the car, which my brother Herb had to expla

Why I Write- Item Seventeen

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I feel I am, in fact,/ the dimmest and least wise/ man on earth.

Austin, 22

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A thrill seeker before midnight - but closer to twilight ...

Mr. Barefoot & Rev. Broad

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Cold hurts at first, but you wake up.

Still

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I wanted only to be still, to become a rustle for a moment of papery fall leaves sighing past one another on their way to the funeral pyre in the front lawn, sweetly fragrant with the scent of death and inevitable decline, fearless in their annihilation, incandescent…

Annoyance

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The men stir around so aimlessly

Proceed here to read some of my work

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http://jrleyvas.net

My Book of Frozen Ponds

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We broke our hearts rather than sit in your reversible seats with the plain brown paper packages tied on our laps, we did so together. You don't want to hear about that. It gets too close to the actual murder of love. I…

002

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there are nights when you're all alonein the darkwhere the only lightis the glow of the computer screenand words can't seem the scratchthe surface of your skulland bit by bitthe sentences, phrases, and lettersattached to your synapsesdrownin your subconscious

Loretta McKinley

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After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.