Most recent stories

Doll Parts

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She’s always had one foot on a pedestal and the other in a gutter.

care & danger

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When Roger was small his two favorite toys were a tiny, squat doll called Care and a rubber millipede.

The Illuminated Dream

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It broke through the surface of the suburban world and shattered it into pieces, fragments of dreams and amazement. She was not the same as she had been a moment before. It was an epiphany she couldn't put her finger on.

The Perfume Of Wisdom

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I give you the rattle of the rattlesnake. I give you a daub of creosote. I give you the metaphysics of glue.

What The Hell Nationality Are You?

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It’s confusing enough to grow up in a place like America, a country without definitive culture, except for ranch dressing and reality TV, but it’s even worse to grow up half one thing, half another, christened a hyphenation of names without connection to

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eleven o'clock spills despair all over our bedspread

The Highwayman Teaches Me About Sex and Death

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hooves moon dark latch eyes rope / Bess the landlord's daughter, the landlord's blackeyed daughter / gun breasts dress shame shouts blood blood blood

The Calamity Train (Pulling Seven Cattle Cars):Remixed for the Occupy Yourself Movement

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We believe in our love storyin spite of the ferocious efforts ofserial bankerseverywhere to discourage us from looking our damned nearprettiest if we really feel like it. I meangranted they do do their ugly troll dogimpressions of…

Little People

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If you consider yourself neither little nor big, remember that anything large, colossal, macroscopic, ample, sizable, blown-up, bulky, mighty was once small, lesser, minute, tiny, dinky, gnomish, weeny or lilliputian.

My No. 1

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I remember meeting you many years later.

Tainted Love

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...skinny love, skinned and thinned weak broth love...

writing in loops

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Antique pens better allow an old soul to express what needs expressing.

Butterfly Morning

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We woke up and we were whirlpools of spilt turquoise oil / with wings for flying

Wheelbarrow

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He was ready for the rub. Tense. She could always tell. The legs, the shuffles. He had to be frantic before he would come to her, his own wife. Vanity, fright. She could read him like a book open on the table, turn his pages the way a fish flakes. "It's comfort night,…

The Whippy Guy

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He was the tall, whippy type. Dangerous.

The Man Who Loved Purple

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If it had a surface, he painted it purple. If it didn’t have a surface, he painted it purple.

Better Spent Time

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there is a tunnel / between your skin and the ground / for kisses to crawl

The Deepest Cut

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Smoke is pouring outta my ears! (And outta my mouth and nostrils, but that's normal.) The Fast-o-matic Supermart has changed their coupons. Now you can't swap them for plastic surgery. So all those tubes of New Orleans-style Cottil-i-Lard dog sausage…

Egypt is Wisconsin is...

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Regime is elected officials ignoring constituents, ignoring protestors, ignoring history

The Gift

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There is no need to worry about art. Art in its ideal forms stays safe. Real art resists being the object of attention. It directs your gaze, and it swings in you forever.

Dear Helen

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I watched you knee deep in water with a little boy you were hitting.

A Glimpse

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I am everything she wanted me to be. I am crossed legs, chest out; I am wearing a soft white dress—lacy and completely inappropriate to the Midwest, to 2011, to anything about my existence.

the fine hair on your belly

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On the beaches in the summer the fine hair rose up from under the material of your bikini and swirled around your deep navel, almost invisible to the naked eye, but not to the mind, which imagines everything funneling down into the center of your being,

You, the Correct Other, the One I am Looking For

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You, the correct Other, the one I am looking for, you have exacting standards concerning where things must go.

The Truth Will Out

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sorry I didn't inform you (missing cap) about my trip to Spain, (comma splice)

Fun With Literature, Part Two

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Here are some ideas for stories I have had. 1. A captain of a whaling ship loses his leg to a whale, and makes it is life's mission to find this beast and kill it, and make a pair of boots, belt, and wallet out of its skin. 2. Ten people are invited to stay the weekend at a…

Soon to Be a Minor Motion Picture (excerpt)

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Man, you never ceased to crack me up! If you thought you'd just been called a homo, you probably wouldn't want to try to disprove it by grabbing hold of a naked guy and wrestling him to the floor of a shower room.

The Leap To When

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to pay dues to the calendar year / when a day breaks in quartertime / the stars account for halftone

Forgiving the Governor of South Carolina

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(Originally appeared in Fourth Genre, April 2011) The waiting room of the Rosenfeld Cancer Center in Abington, Pennsylvania is my new home away from home, and I'm eager to prove it. When I step on the ridged, black rubber welcome mat and the sliding…

Infamy

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These were the kind of days children dreamed of. A warm sun shone over Coronado, California. December weather on the island did not prevent outside play. The wind off the bay remained soft, even if chilled. Church let out early. There was time to pla