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  • The Coed

    a small stream moves beneath the leaves     on the grounds of    the university       where an arrowhead or two lies underneath the tables of    foundations and off to the side, the tennis players are like bees collecting on a keeper’s mask     which is how the players look       through the windscreens’ mesh then…

  • Child Widow

    “Quick weddings and short marriages are all I know,” I admitted in my interview at June’s Brides, “but I love lace, and I’m capable of telling white lies to brides’ mothers. I was a psych minor, so I know everything is harder than it looks.” I got the job. And for the next few years,…

  • Focus

    Photograph found in the road: bejeweled hand gripping a limp cock. All parties suffering from lack of ambition. The hills of Tuscany won’t dapple with sunlight, and here it is nearly noon. You didn’t much want that leather jacket, the vendor didn’t really care to sell it, you hardly tried it on, he barely praised…

  • Witness

    Jackie Flynn just turned eleven, but he has already spent plenty of time inside the Knickerbocker, a dark smoky barroom where men with rulers in their back pockets drink beer and stare at a soundless TV. Whenever his father goes out to do what he calls "moonlighting," Jackie’s mother insists that Jackie accompany him. She…

  • The Oar in the Sand

    He sailed to wherever the sirens were, surviving by lashing himself to the mast. An image of stalwart resistance, or weakness. And the singers mere angels. And heaven only desire, simply the illegal. Sailed into the not-quite world. Or returned home to slay the suitors who had been feasting there for years. What about afterwards?…

  • I Am Not Your Mother

    Before they had ever lived in the house, somebody’s useless cow had sickened and died in the shed next door. The shaggy rope that tethered her still lay in a corner, so when Sonia figured out that her older sister, Goldie, was having to do with a boy, she got up in the night, disentangled…

  • Inman Square Incantation

    Forgive us, we don’t exactly believe or disbelieve What the President tells us regarding the great issues Of peace, justice, and war—skeptical, but distracted By the swarm of things. The young Romanian poet in LA Said shyly: “In Romania, bums are only bums, but here In America the bum pushes a cart loaded with his…