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Anhedonia

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“When he felt most loved, he felt most _ burdened.” Stephen Dobyns When she loved him she burdened him. She knew he felt a pull but he always resisted it. They went to an old refurbished hotel in Venice and asked if they might see the rooms. …

I Saw the News Today, Oh Boy

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We are infused with fear and dread/ of the world we won’t engage/ except through flat screens and remotes,

Metastasis

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I am eternal/ as long as the power holds

Augustinian Prayer Sonnet

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He kissed her tits and thought of art

Chennai

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I go to the seaand turn myself over in my hand like a shell: a hollow conch carried on the resonance of a song long past its singing. My heart is a well and this city, one that is forever in drought.

My Expiration Date Approaches

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the doomed, but splendid, first year GT40.

Papadad: a portrait

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Papadad has one good eye. The other fell out during a rant and has since been replaced by a rifle scope, which he uses to scrutinise enemies.——Papadad is an authority on everything, even topics he has not researched. He expatiates on these at the dinner table,…

Spilled Milk

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(I'd appreciate some feedback on this very weird story.) A Frosted Mini Wheat walks in to a bar...

I'll find you - A Dedication to Mathew Paust

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Matt was among those rare creatures; an ideal kind of reader ...

From The Plague Year 2020

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I went to Costco

This Story Isn't About You

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"This story isn’t about you, even if it seems as though it is."

Voices of the Dying

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raging on road and page

The Curse of Plenty

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Dinner conversation reminds me of the chatter of birds. Happy talk. Nothing real.

Raw Meat

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I took Annie to the zoo, and the tigers got out. The little tigers, that is. Cubs. Two of them. The zoo employees scurried about, peeking into nooks and crannies.

Sweet Dreams

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But tonight the circus is dark. She is free to go to her lover, to embrace, to float in the night sky.

Mad Love

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No fear of that, / he assured her,

Any poem is possible

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I wrangle word juice from the Oxford American, sighing at photographs of blues musicians with solemn lakes for eyes.

Restaurant Rondo

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Before she flushes the toilet the world is spinning.

Working Girl

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Suddenly a hand shot up on the other side of a hedge. “I’ll have one of those!” cried someone who remained invisible.

Egon Schiele In Prison

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With his hand, he sees through walls: from the street, From Schonbran park, girls go to rest in his house. They sleep off parents’ beatings. They eat.

Scuffle

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Last Christmas Eve, my Nana shot my grandfather in the foot because he wouldn't stop boning the woman up the street.  So on Christmas Eve, after Nana drank a bunch of those baby-sized Miller Hi-life beers, she went upstairs, got her pistol, and said, “I'm gonna…

Animus and Vitriol

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At some point, we will have to shoot them/ through the eyes and skull and heart

The Girl in the Storm

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There once was a girl who was lost in a storm. She wandered this way and that, this way and that, trying to find a way home. But the sky was too dark, and the rain too fierce; all the girl did was go in circles. Then, suddenly, there were arms around her

Bricks

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There are things we must not say.

Three Flash Sonnets

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Poor souls. Likely they'll be poets.

Of Cameramen and Death Squads in Tbilisi

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we share somewhat the same past he was bureau chief of ABC overseas

Why Men Compete

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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway

He Spreadeth Sharp Pointed Things upon the Mire

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My uncle looks into the bleached eye of his cat and asks "What happened to my ear?" The meerkat’s eye replies: "You had cancer. Remember? They had to cut off your ear to save you."

Dog Park

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We met an old friend and his old dog. We went off leash on the lush Buffalo grass. He and I—this old friend, I mean—talked mostly of divorce, something we shared between us.

Masturbatory

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Back when I was fifteen, Svengal, Mohammed and I used to scamper up to the roof of our sixteen story apartment building and use it as our Masturbatory. We called it that because it served as a sort of observatory where we could diligently perform our rece