Most recent stories

Self-Portrait with Pipe and Bandaged Ear

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His ear is swathed by a large white bandage that runs down under the chin. Dressed in a heavy dark green coat, buttoned at the neck. Streaks of orange relieve the darkness of the green. Purple and black cap on his head. Calmly smoking a pipe.

If only one more thing

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If I could say only one thing more to Tony who died a month ago, there is one thing I could find to say

Love’s Course Is Full of Stones

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Come with me to a place where the sun and moon are quiet, and day and night are equal to the point they are no more. Deny at last the springtime in its most false of promises. Reject that life is death, accept that death is life, ignore or embrace love's…

How Things Fall Apart

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The leaves/ seek reunion with the ground// and leave the oak tree naked/ in December’s cold.

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

Blinding Light

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Snow sheeted on the river...

That Which Does Not Kill You (Only Postpones The Inevitable)

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Harold Smithe awoke that Tuesday morning precisely at 6 am. He did this every day for as long as he could remember. Even on the weekends when his schedule varied. Well, varied slightly. He lay in bed trying to wake up and mulled over the things he needed to accomplish for…

Make-Believe

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My sister plays Jesus.

Dürer’s Eve

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The consequences follow from here: the shine of forbidden knowing the apple soon offered to Adam the twined Serpent’s hidden fangs

Down South

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We drank beer and played loose pool, attracted two fun girls, one Jamaican, the other dirty blonde, both of whom seemed interested in only one of the four of us.

Snowdrop

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Spring show its populist face, Flies in the house, missionaries at the door...

Exordium

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Overhead cranes balance ordinance from one end of the palatial enclosure to the other. There are robots, high-voltage, force-fields…more than a hundred ways someone could get hurt. I looked back again…She was gone.

Puppet ABC - 1

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I am not a Road Scholar, ladies & gentlemen, though I’ve been On the Road more than once. Do not mistake me for a bum. I am not a hobo, homeless or otherwise, in this life or any other, I am not a bum, I insist. But I d

Pastiche No 19

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Remember Ben Nevis? Trying to reach the summit,seeming to take forever until it seemed to take a second,some song (not heard before or since) playing maniacally on someinstrument in our heads,or maybe it was just in mine.Familiar …

Note to Vera Wang

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Vera Wang I saw you on Oprah today girl. Oh no no no.

Third World Problems: On Breaking My Kindle in Africa

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I blame the fucking mosquito net.

Tchotchkes

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Each little token is the world/ as you knew it at each time and place

A Love Story

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The woman abruptly closed her legs.

Loose Ends

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He looked peaceful.

The Dialogue

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"Aren't you free to say whatever you please?"

In the Chambers of the End

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Tiny skiers look like beetles/on a white bedspread. /We watch them fall to earth from/the high peaks and tell ourselves this is the week that sealed it

Father's Day

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“What do you want for Father's Day?” she asks. “Sex,” he says, his mouth curling at the corners, “and a bottle of Shiraz.” …

Grammaria

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With the sudden addition of a comma and a pronoun, the clause declared its independence.

The Subsequent Ferocious Silence Is

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just another torn & burning journeyflag for the rebel heart. All we know forsure is that dancing among the toads andcrickets takes a bit of courage. Beauty takesreal living guts these days. Laughing takes guts,too. Living takes love. Love is feeling. What'dyou think I…

Ashtray Blues

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O most disconsolate ashtray, you are not politically correct, it's a conspiracy I suspect. O most disconsolate ashtray, how I long to see your smoke arise, suspended in my eyes, now you have nothing left to do but sit there in a smokeless …

Esmeralda

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Being an uncredited bonus composition, written in the sublimest access of divine afflatus this poet believes his lyric verse has ever known. “In olden times, dark was not counted fair”: Those were the words, I think, of some old poet. …

Great Rift Valley

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she shivered in the ceasefire like a virginal nude brought to life.

To Fill the Hollows

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most famously, a small/ writhing dog. A thousand casts were made/ before they stopped

A man with bleeding hands

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A man with bleeding hands at the back door of Out of the Closet this morning asked me for the bride and groom figurines at the top of my donation box

Fuzzy Mollis

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My small kitchen has barely enough room to turn around in, yet I had the feeling I was being watched. When I experience it again, just seconds later, I realize it was eyes watching, actual eyes, not a camera or machine.