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  • The Heirs of Onan

    The talk show this morning stars those who prefer self-satisfaction to making love with another. Both male and female artists in the tradition of Onan are present in comfortable chairs, quite at home discussing their methods. They often turn to crafted latex, a phallus more reliable than that on a man. And by the way,…

  • At the Races

    never quite buried altogether you and I in summer’s newer-than-new same light groom the dumb breathtaking throng of sprints resigned again to put everything we have on the animal that never comes in

  • Sonnet

    There were lies. You knew, but then forgot the child peeking around the corner, hiding from you. Wind sifts through the beechnut arbor. Peripheral, the real story goes trailing moonlike, behind the car window, just beyond view. And how bad is it to have believed the best of your story, or a lover’s; to have…

  • The Weather Guy

    Hurricane This is scaring us, Hurricane That’s not far behind, And we’re not turning our backs one second. We look at the screen all day. We find Hurricane This still flapping away At the shirt of Tom the Weather Guy. Canada throws an arm around him. Hurricane That just bats an eye. Hurricane This is…

  • Dead Wood

    for Tom Lynch Huge glossy beetles doze in this room, each with a lifted wing-case the size of a car door. They are only fed once, then close themselves with a click. Too heavy to fly in their mahogany and oak, they have grown handles.

  • Gloomy Sonnet V

    There’s no such thing as a rich sex life. Sex is poor. But sex isn’t the only thing That’s poor. Black-eyed Susans and purple loosestrife For instance haven’t got a prayer. The ring She wears causes a certain Platonic sting Like bonsai trees, which make me claustrophobic. Seeing her without it could make the angels…

  • Lions Bible

    An 1804 edition in which 1 Kings 8:19 reads ‘But thy son that shall come forth out of thy lions’ instead of ‘loins’ Empires are my premise. Archilochos my schoolchair. More was my first word and that means Rome. Denotation is detonation, be careful. As car fuel: at home in the anger, at home on…

  • Emu of Wonder

    They took me to see the Emu of wonder eat out of a sack. They took me to see the Pronghorn pronking endlessly. They took me to see the White Hart at night, lit by headlights. I hiked to the top of the falls to see the Coho surrender. I heard the Pekinese suffering behind…

  • Early Man

    Leaves came and went as men warred over the shape of the table— peace would be talked in Paris, where Ho Chi Minh had been young once, hungry and hunted. Veteran of another war, my father wanted no squabbles at the supper table. What shape should it take to insure that we were out of…