1. If it’s true jazzmen hurt a load of women like gods playing double-time to a packed house then it’s true a certain kind of woman hurts for jazz because I know Rebecca Geraldine slips in says all Charlie has is a horn and a habit I come in third Doris Sydnor lipsticked a hatcheck…
"You shouldn’t play with fire." Lena leans over Ivan’s shoulder and blows out the votive candle over which he is passing his index finger back and forth. She jiggles her arm nervously, and the silver bracelet slides beneath her sleeve. She looks around her. Everywhere there is plenty. The people are fat. How can some…
Good luck to the one who finds the dream of a blue cave strewn with big dumb shellfish. Good luck to the one who finds the propellers, the one tentacle inscribed with prophetic runes. Good luck to the one who finds the decoder ring for which gestures mean love, run, don’t even— Say the man…
whose strict interpretations are no help to me this morning— you can’t meet my need to go through the world unseeingly; I must attend your demonstrations. Turn the pepper-leaves to earrings, knight the sugar, turn light to salt, cups to miners’ lamps then back to whole seasons of rain in the subcontinent. I move in…
Lucy calls Greg up as soon as she gets to her office. She was the one who had to run, as soon as the teacher conference was over, who took off out of there like a bat out of hell, heading for her car, leaving Greg to walk more leisurely home, no doubt stopping on…
Small birds, damaged by shellfire, slant against the light. “The descent of wisdom . . . ,” the dictator begins, and pauses, recalling his mother’s wine-reddened face. A residue of depression become ill will, a sensation of engorgement, and an undeveloped moment in which the spirit stalls, falls back, and drops to its knees…
I had in hand my stamped yellow ticket and passed on information—that I should walk to the farthest end of the auto salvage yard for what I said I needed, a door. Loosely, I had in mind a modern underworld, the twisted, broken bodies organized by make and name for convenience. “Do you know what…
We have a grandfather somewhere. We don’t know where—I mean, we kiddos don’t. Not anymore. Mostly we remember him at the low house by the lake. Grousing at the black flies, stinking up Nature with the smell of his burning charcoal-and-plum pipe tobacco. A stout figure, like an orator in some senate, he liked to…
The owl said, My son, Oak Table, your stand is strong. I have four talons on each leg, and you four talons on each leg. Our cold heavy hold holds mostly air. We are able. The table did not speak. We both make our home in the oak. My eyes glow with the glow of…
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