Most recent stories

Departures

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Fingers scrabble idly at pocket seams, forage between teeth, grasp for tepid cups, patter a drumbeat on knees.

Tired After Looking for my Voice Recorder for an Hour

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I wrote a million lines of poetry last night. / Metaphor after metaphor of your beauty

Novelas (interstice from Black Swans)

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Insterstice: Novelas Four Sonnets Since …

Robert Penn Warren and Orange County Blue

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We were old. Wind came in with small threats and played games with drapes. A print of orchids and some other green affair that looked to me like kiwis. Sadie was arranging some items on a desk and I noticed there was a cricket on the window. I was thinking…

Never Sacrifice Yourself

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No matter how many times flies land on butter they will never become butterflies

Cuteness vs. Astuteness

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There’s no greater reward than the plaudients you get from a tough female audience.

Night Raid

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The president snapped awake at three AM. He realized he was a serial killer. Highly trained and equipped killers on his orders were summarily murdering thousands of raggedly dressed people in the name of Democracy.

Year of the Microbes

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Tiger Milk (Part 4--the last act.)

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"In the grave my lips will still be moving."

You're Breathing My Relapse

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I was an alcoholic for ten years, starting in my early twenties and continuing into my thirties. Then finally, after many attempts, I got myself straightened out. My son's birth finally did it for me. It wasn't like a switch flipped in the delivery room…

We the Wild Men

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There's a whole pack of us, men minted from hot brass and thumbtacks. Too tough for sensibility's sake.

Zero

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The arithmetic of human experience/ is always a losing game for some. Poor Jane. Rich Dick.

Mark Twain's Typewriter

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Did I refer to Mark Twain’s typewriter as an animal? Did I call it a hyena? I would not say that about Mark Twain’s typewriter.

Waiting, Waiting

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The fear you represent is a real drag. That's all there is to say. But like every other house on the block I have spiders in the basement who are waiting to be brought up into the golden light. These creatures only want to be good at being alive. Instead they are given…

Visions of Granada (Double Sestina)

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Double SestinaOn the surrender of the Alhambra to the Christian Spaniards, while on the losing side of territorial disputes, by the speaker, the Moorish king Boabdil: and the subsequent exile of the Moors, who brought geometry, astronomy, architectural…

Can't Sleep But Very Tired

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I repeated your name like a mantra / and vomited black bile in the sink. / Some Buddhist monk told me / if I recite it ten thousand times / you will be mine.

Empty or Too Full?

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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…

It's A Different World When You Walk With A Cane

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People do want to be kind. It's just that sometimes they need a little push (or, in a few cases, a big fat shove) in the right direction.

Derivative

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It’s not the money. The money’s/ just a way of keeping score.

Feminist Gift-Shopping is Man's Work

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“Hey Jimmy,” we’d shout at the bartender, whose real name was Bill, but who acquired his nomme de biere with the fixtures when he bought the joint. “What?” he’d reply in monosyllables in order to keep his overhead down. “What does a woman want?”

The Tragically Short Life of the American Barfly

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That is then and the devil reigns in the here and now. Tonight I am the barfly and tomorrow I die.

The Basement of Desire

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sooner or later you realize

Pen and Ink on Paper

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...ancient answers for new questions.

Erased

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You took up residence on the dark side of things, a bolthole in a wind-flayed right angle of a tower block where pigeons and suicides tumbled blackly on the air currents. You set about drifting off from who you were on a tide of cheap whisky and bad poetry, graduating…

Jukebox Genesis

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Once something starts, there is no telling where it will go.

WikiGreen (a semi-found poem)

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Green is the color of emeralds, jade, and growing grass. In the continuum of colors of visible light it is located between yellow and blue. Green is the color mostShades of green desireIn the Category: Shades of green Green politics meet…

Hitler's Younger Brother, the Mohel

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And now for a word from Hitler’s Younger Brother, the Mohel Well, half brother really He was always such an embarrassment to the Hitler family Always climbing the infinite tree of hope Against the permanent limb of gravity No gratitude or all

The Shaker

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A man and a woman argued over the size of the quake. They were sitting on the floor like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Blocked

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