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  • Some Writers in Wartime

    What is essential as breath reduced to a squabble about moral parity to hold a brief for the party that orders death. Moral parody: ours is but to cook, serve, clear, speak when spoken to. * We will not swell the glory chorus, slaughter calling to slaughter like lovers possessed. Nor will we turn away….

  • Just Family

    Rachel was the one who delivered the message. In the middle of dinner, she remembered the phone call, stood up, tossed her braid over her shoulder, and dug in her pocket for a scrap of paper. "Mom," then she looked warily at her father, "Dad, the prison called again today." She squinted at her eight-year-old…

  • Blackouts

    rolled through the city. Whoever has an answer won’t last. Traffic muscles through. Whole families lazing on steps eating grapes. “No I’m not,” says the youngest to her canary. “You grew into your legs, Tall One, didn’t you.” Then no one. Loosed papers flatten the fences. Bits of glass rest there and burn. This part…

  • Sentence

    Look:             paper screen             blank;             the color white,                         a zero,                         hollow light bulb,           the O            not yet typed. This means                       no imagination                       without                       its imagery. Letters     can appear                                     as bones      (Do not forget the image)             if you     write with     calcium.      Because a subject…

  • A Sunday in God Years

    Like someone trying to nap in a room with a glaring terrarium God rolls over but before resuming his dream where He’s a lover decked out in a sunbeam, He glances at the blue planet he made, at continents crashing and mountains popping up, at sheets of dirt settling in streams and streams settling in…

  • Undertones

    The sail had been drawn into an albino python hung vertically for the town to witness. The sea too shallow to dock. The boat     its chipped purple belly remained somewhat distant     solitary with only its static reflection. The fishermen swam to shore. Dark-brown sand     their patterned trails to the plaza for rest. One wore a…

  • 2 Korean Girls

    June. A white heat. Two schoolgirls with crisp collars tread home on a red road.    Two young boys with crew                                                                                                          cuts yawn in the third tank, blink  from five hours sleep.    Blue dragonflies, girlsweat,    orange dust on Adidases… Green interior. Boysweat.        A twist of knobs and dials. Down the…

  • Cautionary Tale

    Twenty-one once descript ranch-style houses built twenty years ago on a stretch of road that once led to a small-time chicken farm, fresh eggs. Each house dropped on two bare acres. Twenty-one tabula rasas that go wish wish wish wish if racing by with a car window down. No one has ever slammed on their…

  • The Second Night

    Outside the white cottage, a half-dozen chairs set out. A run of rocky fields washed by starlight. Full moon rising off the cliffs cutting a path to the islands. Inside the cottage, the sounds of children quieting themselves. The slow scrape and rattle of chairs dragged across a linoleum floor. Last stir of footsteps fading…