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Mr. Scary

           for Richard Bausch   There was some sort of commotion at the end of the checkout line. Words had been exchanged, and now two men, one tall and wide-shouldered, the other squat and beefy, were squaring off against each other and raising their voices. Their shoes squeaked on the linoleum. The short one, who…

Divorcée

She accepts all invitations, asking me what else she’s supposed to do. It’s all you can do, I tell her, apart from staying home every night, which is where I was when she phoned from the party, the kind I used to frequent as part of my own new life, but no longer do. I…

Angels

They thought the job would be more musical: Rainbows and trumpets. They’d burst through clouds of marble streaked with flame and offer blinding demonstrations of the ontological proof of God. People would look up and say “Ineffable!” Instead, they swooped through the mall calling Ashley? Pammy? fished Mrs. Baines’ wedding ring from the drain again,…

The Fake Nazi

1. There was an old man in Germany who thought he was a Nazi. He turned himself in to a small court in a town near Nuremburg, and said, “Restart the trials, I should be punished for what I have done.” He was the right age, and his name was a fairly common German name—…

Who Can’t Handle Me Is You

for Little Milton & Charlie Rich Memphis, City of the Dead, City of Sun and blight, Soulsville, rest stop for hell they gone and run off. Tonight I dog you like a broken trombone. Twice I’ve ended here on Union past midnight, brain looted by morphine, the tremolo pinch of train steel across the Frisco…

Sweet Nothings

After gimlets and cosmopolitans, we’re on to sex and its catastrophes, Susan telling about the time she ordered a paycheck’s worth of Italian lingerie. She dressed slowly, she says, feeling only a little ridiculous as she slid one gartered leg across the coffee table. Looking up, her husband asked if she could stop blocking the…

Our Time with the Pirates

Looking Sometimes we still see it. Even now. Nights like this, sprawled on the deck of the mothership—stars rioting overhead, waves spanking the hull below—we close our eyes and there it looms, our Infinity, floating serenely across the insides of our lids like some pale winged creature borne of desire, luck, and dreams. Also a…

Hotel Razing

Snow falls the tenants gather at the corner Gone are their small poor lives we envy in The lyrical vein the snow falls as thick As soap over the monuments over The benches and the scratched branches the pile Of tires in the median strip the snow Falls like excess paperwork on the street- Lamps…