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Little Yappy Dog

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Should I believe you now? I said fuck you. I knew better but I said it. He kicked me some but I covered up, he didn’t get me bad as he thought. When he got tired, he took my doorkey off my ring. Said make me come back, and I’ll kill you. And he left.

"The Misses Moses," from my collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (Norton 2010)

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The Misses Moses by Brad Watson from Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives The Moses sisters lived together, alone, in the fine old brick house near downtown where they…

the honey ant of Kaapa Tjampitjimpa

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1I'VE BEEN looking though books of paintings and I've been thinking …

Wild turkey chase

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“Don’t ever call me that name, formal or informal, okay? Forget you heard it.”

Reduced

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There I was at the OPEN HOUSE. It was easy, three doors down. The sign on the lawn said, PRICE REDUCED. The real estate lady said, “Back again? Thinking of buying”? I laughed. There were several couples there. People have…

Double Sonnet I

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We love our other animals

For Fathers Day 2014

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Divine guidance. That's why Dad used a blowtorch to set the jug on fire, its contents the “Devil's elixir.”

Threads of a Dream

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I'm gonna go find a hole to dwell in deep in the mountains where the Indians used to live dig a cave into my subconscious learn to be less secretive

A Walk Among Pigeons

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A Walk Among Pigeons I know these pigeons. They were beggars in another life. I may have been among them once, but then I fell in love, and when that ended, my spirit floated free. And I became, though somewhat battered and b

Ghost Story

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They come to wipe themselves from my memory, but that, of course, is impossible. In this place, we are bound together, the long line of men who have killed me, and I.

THE CAPTION CHANGES BUT THE PICTURE STAYS THE SAME

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When he leaves herThe weather is glorious of courseUnblinking sunshineHe walks awayShe touches the edge of his sleeve I touch his sleeveBlack jacket flung over his shoulder Black jacket over his…

A Sound with No Floor

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The corridor was longer than it had been, but that was only because I was walking it slowly. I had a key in my pocket. I knew this the way you know things in the morning before you are properly awake, not by checking but by a kind of trust, and I trusted it completely,…

Existential Weather Report (Election Day 2020)

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Later, at home, on the internet, I assemble fragments of street celebrations from cities one coast to the other. I watch them and listen in the compressed fidelity of computer speakers. How strangely things feel.

Living In A Novel

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I walked into a novel and sat down on a rock. The language was distressed and full of cyclones and swells. I could smell embalming fluid and folklore. Everywhere I went there were doorknobs, escalators, and clocks. Objects of all genre overflowing with prose. I stood at …

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…

Call Me

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The woman took a small note card from her purse and wrote on it. She then stood, handed the card to the doctor, and said, “Call me.”

Stitch

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He refuses to answer his phone, preferring the safe medium of email or his answering machine. He only eats pre-cooked, pre-packaged food, only drinks bottled waters, sodas and juices. He has cable, but only watches late-night infomercials and shopping cha

Oklahoma, 1944: Howard Hughes Spends the Night in Jail

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There's a drain in the floor.

almost a still life

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(a sidewalk poem)

The Cat Pulls No Sudden Punches

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and springs its ready-made claws into action and takes a soppy chance that things will probably go its feline way today. But you, my friend, must you always throw the testing switch to high voltage on me? Yeah I get that the history teachers…

Gymnopedies

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Does sound shape silence/ or silence shape sound?

Poems I Wish I Had Written

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Parsimony, Sage Advice, Alimony, and Time. That would be one. The Waste Land. The Hollow Men. The Red Wheelbarrow. There are others, But I have definite shoe anxiety dreams and can’t get over them. Do not Go Gently Into That Good Night. Alone

Cold

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Winter will be cold this year, you tell her. You read that. She says she is with child with her new husband. You tell her she's forty-five, it is selfish. The baby. It's fine. You demand to be at her tests. Evan may let you, she says. He's a doll. She would never use that…

Still Life with a Bottle of Olives

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On the table the image is by Chardin but the puzzle is by someone else and that is what he has dumped out of the box.

The Rest of the Story of Mom

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Easing her hand with her other hand.

A One-eyed Polar Bear Tap-dancing On A Polaroid Of Satan Dressed As Gandhi

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Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, lv - lxiii

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facts of matters are not as they seem,/hour by hour crafty comments creep in,/another hour and "the good" is a horror:/ our human blindness is older than our sight.

What She Gave to the Sea

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1.There's a young woman in a nightclub seated next to a window out of which she watches the slow descent of snow, illuminated by strategic lights. She imagines herself falling with those flakes. Her friend has left her for the dance floor. The young woman is…

news through a window

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TV and power cord valorized in dust,/ wires and digital guts unimpaired, I’d guess . . .

The Dirt

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The coffin-sized pit in his basement wasn’t freshly dug.