Most recent stories

Walking with the Moon

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I heard a voice. It was calling me as from a far-off cloud. I listened, holding my breath, and heard it again, though fading away, barely audible. If I hadn't known my name I wouldn't have decrypted it. Three hazy syllables clearly detached with a sigh between each of them.…

Stationed

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I

Existential Weather Report

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I had a moment of clear inter-species ideation...

Unconscious Primate Pandemic Panic

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I wrap my left foot

The Sweet Need to Dream

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We all ache for the Purple storm that’s said to Smear its finger in the one True place our soul resides On the road to delicate love Rising in the summer blood And the raw shadows Behind lust make a woman Heave in the Garden While lis

The Merry Go Round

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I felt that love could not be paid for or else could never be paid for enough.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

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We left an oppressed island so we may die in a free country.And, oh lord, how we died!We died from affixation. We died from AIDS.We died from a heart attack. We died from a brain hemorrhage.We died from Parkinson's.We died from breast cancer.We died by suicide.We…

The Year of the Cat

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And it is pouring cats and dogs on a California afternoonoff the corner of Sunset and Highland.Droplets of sorrow drip down our foreheadas our eyelashes bash back the rain.A woman hands us free tickets to the Merv Griffin show.The bus is about to leave without us.We take…

Arrivals and Departures

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Because of her I got there early, and like I figured, the train was late.

Enter Ghost

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I love that moment in Hamlet when the Ghost first appears. It seems so real, thanks in large measure to Horatio's sober outlook & initial skepticism. It's really happening. Their eyes are popping out of their heads. And it makes me wonder, how would I react if I…

Collect Enough Fragments, You've Got Yourself a Poem

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I. The sun's corona. Empty boxes near the firehouse. Red birth. A bird's lost wing. II. The bitterness of littleness. Apples in a pile.Early love.A spider, swinging. III. A father's harshness.Twelve bills unpaid. Leaves in a crevice. A dream…

The World is Full

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of birds. The world is full of snakes. The world isfull of mushrooms. The world is full of flies. The worldis full of bombs. Not so many trees. Not as many as you might think. The world is full of flowers. Notso many bees. The world is full of rocks. Some…

our measured treads

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—and the god presiding over all / a four-faced, double-Janused clock / its equal seconds clickt away / ticking us our steps and breaths . . .

Sorting It All Out

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To understand how and when things have gone wrong, it works best to proceed from the beginning and put them in order.

The Dog

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The dog is reading. This morning, as every morning, the book is open in front of him. Well before his master's rise, he had already read the moon then dawn and the clouds. Now the slippers, these that walk here and there. Followed by coffee and the pages that turn. A little…

The Starfish and The Pin Joint

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The two boys walked the long dock to the edge of bay,like scrappy lobsters pointing toward the waves,"The cockroaches of the sea,"his father said,It was the old country"Only prisoners were fed lobster.They stayed in the dampholes."He thought the sea ebbed and flowed like a…

Wanting to forget

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I do not want to know what it looks like when a society walks off a cliff's edge,

Map of the World to Come

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The middle finger talks of many things How I killed the moon But still drank the moonshine And how getting over her took Some bleeding from the soul Maybe it’s the Inner Face of Outer Space That worries me the most But what about the Fro

Market Day

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I'd rather slit my wrists with a Triscuit...

Three Micros

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I asked the hospice nurse about maggots.

George Martian (psych eval)

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PROSPER CENTRAL SCHOOLS PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL EVALUATION CONFIDENTIAL Prosper Central…

Take You Me for a Sponge, My Lord?

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Who does that besides Kafka, Arreola, and Steven Wright?

the rest of sleep

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peripheral dreams fall out from the head / the body squirms then burrows abed: / “have you had a good life? you now have less! / —led a hard life instead? you soon will be gone!”

whispered boat

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word boat

The Game Show Support Network

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Those who have lost at game shows meet each week for mutual support. All is well, until they start disappearing in ways related to their ill-fated appearances as contestants.

The portrait

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Gestures we would like to make in the solitude of a café terrace ... Early in the morning ... She's sitting there, seems shivering. Grey dress, red scarf. Her eyes move. I try to meet them - small, vague black clouds which pass, without resting, by mine. She drinks her…

Old Love Passes By Like a Landscape

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from a moving train. The lost ball inthe tall grass still wants for no one. AndI'm suposed to pretend? You got yoursmile from something, not someone. But it took all your long hair in the process. You've been looking for the one true grace, the ultimate…

The Optimist

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If people were more loyal to me we wouldn't be having all these problems.

I Dreamt I Was Vermeer

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I dreamt I was Vermeer For just a little while I took this photo of a criminal A mugshot really And claimed I had painted it From memories of a previous life He looked just like a Vermeer With the light coming in From the side of his fac

Inaction (or a disease of consciousness)

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“... More weighty than wisdom or wealth is a little folly" (Ecclesiastes)