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A Country of Husbands

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The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.

Greenback Fly

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It doesn't take a genius to figure how he sank, in the drink, like Jeff Buckley. Like a stone.

A Tale Of Three Titties

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"Someone should have told her that less is more..."

Aurora

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Soon everyone will know what is coming.You cast a spell of heaviness and I crumple, horizontal. Like Aurora, sleep is my destiny.Tantalus in reverse, my curse from food forever I will flee, while everything changes;discomfort and…

The Oxymoronic Life of a Nearly Dead Woman

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I could have a minor stroke.

The Green Bench

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Listen to him barking in the night. Fear shifts on the bed next to you, hogging the covers. Stare at the ceiling and wonder what to do. Forget his birthday. Forget he is forty-two. Forget the phone call from Berkeley twenty-one years…

To Build a Fire

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One frozen hand protruded from the snow.

My Boogie Man

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We'd both done well to avoid crying before today and I couldn't stand to see him like this. I crawled on my hands and knees to the closet. “David, come out of there. I…I don't like this any more than you do. But you can't come to college with me.

Sunday Morning Series- One: What I Learned in Sunday School

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I learned He was a Schmuck when, on/ the mountaintop, with Abraham,/ I waited on His call: one Isaac, neat.

Job Needed

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I have enjoyed three paid teaching days in Minnesota, since my return in 1996. All three paid days were fielded through S.A.S.E., all three at Patrick Henry. I loved it there. I hope never to become certified to teach.

Godfrey part 2: Marjory's bag

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"when I say bag, what I mean to say is…"

Letter to Neruda

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You have been my woman’s lover now for seven years, ever since your two souls met at La Isla Negra.

Flash Fiction With Instructions

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The protagonist’s story goes like this: 1.) You are young. You’ll get over it.

Bone & Air

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Devoid of flesh and muscle, Composed of bone and air.

The Safety of Breakers

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I could put on some music, but it just pushes me further away from you, so it seems. It takes me out far beyond the safety breakers and then reintroduces me to my own splashing two-fisted fear of swimming. You can swim through …

FALLING MAN

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Steve Kramer was a brilliant young artist on the scene in New York in the 70s when I was starting out as a writer. He built little electronic dioramas displaying stuffed rats in various bizarre settings. Flip the switch and they would get fried in a little rat-sized…

Pain as Mnemonic Device

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If something hurts enough/ you never forget it. Like the// toothache when you first learned

Tangerine Slip Cat

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I knew my cat was capable of telepathy when I began to have isolated, random, non-cause-related thoughts about food and feelings, little signals, and I realized that the signs — images of tangerines, tuna, bones; the idea of choice; slate, names; the feeling of…

INGOB

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They think Van Gogh heard music when he looked at his starry nights. Working at a Bingo parlor, you get to believing in a one-in-a-million shot just as much as you doubt the rarity of a sure thing. I only worked part time at the bingo parlor because I ne

Honeycomb

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No bustling inside No extruded amber Wings onyx straight jackets A low hum of displeasure.

Core Values

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Over dinner last evening she said things have to change because she can never be happy with our lives being so concentric and I knew she meant that while we share the common core of marriage, she felt she was a small circle and I was a larger one, enveloping her,…

Christmas

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My first girlfriend had blue Christmas lights strung on trees in front of her stone house. My family had all gone to bed. When midnight came, it was snowing.

Lives and their rivers

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The pristine Hudson's/waters dance in the dark of/the East River's rinse.

Just Yesterday

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midnight mooring

Roses

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Your laugh used to startle the nurses.

Hard Time

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Obesity in America is now considered a felony, thanks to Michelle Obama's biceps and weight obsession. They've sent me to couch potato prison where I'm doing hard time in a dark corner of an unfinished basement filled with cobwebs that…

Milkmen

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I can barely pick out the numbers on the houses

Orbital Mechanics/ National Poetry Month 2014/ 30 poems

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Captain Nemo never died./ He cruises all the seven seas/ below the waves in Nautilus 2,

The Committee

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We are prisoners of anticipation.

November Light

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the neighborhood glistens, silver,/ in an otherwise sad November/ light