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We were downing cheap red wine at a barcalled Library Books free for the takingThe carafe like a blood-filled IV bagI opened a book on palmistry LifelinesWhen my words began to slur you took me to Mickie-Dee’s A ghoul was thereand the grim reaper Masks on every tableI saw bones in the…
It is not my birthday but todayI walk by the cold shrubsof my town’s finest lanepopping birthday cake jelly beansinto my mouth one by one.How spectacular, the waywe’ve reduced an eventinto a little waxen egg!It is speckled like a robin’s egg;pink, blue, yellow, orange.It even has the tasteof the bend where the caketurned crusty caramel…
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.—My memory of my father’s voice message Up the sky-escalator to meet his maker.An angel measures the draperies of my dad’s inscape with tailor’s tape, palpates the spot near his unfaith.Rate your life’s pain. Weighty, dad answers.A brain paint-peeled & snakebit at the end, he says. Like freebasing…
One father culled talons from an eagle’s claw and strung them around our necks. Another father watched a dogwood tree burn slowly through the night. The yellowjacket froze in the space between our faces, two numb fingers brushing the edge of a sharp tack. You spoke softly—each word blinking hard then opening wide its soft eyes, baring for the…
I’ve got an arrow here.Loving the hand that sent itI the dart revere.—Emily Dickinson If it is attention that condemns me,then attention may absolve me: you pierced me cleanly,the hollow daylight proving I never flinched, a movementwhich implies anticipation. I held still. I held onto another love. I turned my back to openings—to doorwaysyou may…
Keep swallowing. You’re being poisoned,but you have the upper hand,so choke it down your torched throat.You know what it meansto be on the banks of the Scioto Riverwith Josh and Nick and a plastic bottle,the kind cyclists tuck onto their bikeframes, filled with every kind of liquoryour parents kept. Who would notice a shot or…
What are we doing in the world? In the world,where the children are playing world. Where they drivetheir little toy cars and trucks upand down the steep imaginary roadsof the mind— maneuvering around the oncoming traffic that barrels down around endless hairpin turns— What are we doing in the world? Where our neighbor’s girls operate on their dolls— Having laid them outin the late sideways light of Spring on a tousled,pink quilt on the grass, they amputate a…
Since I forget the namesof my lovers, my favorite dog,the flowers and constellationsI walk on earth like a spy from silence. In Walmart I forget my change.In sex I forget to cry out.In a dream I don’t know when to wake. I read endlessly, underlining every third word,but it is only the book of night…
A lone snow tire rests twelve feet up a tree.Ten years of negativesscattered a mile down the riverbank. The leather sofa where we’d first kissedspotted in someone’s yard.It’s just stuff, he kept saying. I wanted to believe him.We were still getting to know each other then,learning how to handle something heavy. Stay positive? Be quiet?…
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