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Soul Man
My stanza advances discouragably. My skin’s the wall between the things I call “me,” and if at first I don’t believe I succeed, I look exactly like what I can carry. Body, the; city, the; economy, the— there’s no disaster like this middle classing, my trying to jerk a word into the day. (Got what […]
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Prep
To let another come as far as you with sunflowers, scissors, a Mason jar somehow, the hot sky over everything; the dark obligations mindfulness brings, those bits of invasion called “your feelings” in the event that they require a name— anything that might be love could mean shame. Think how power, that forever wet wind, […]
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Previously Classified Document
It has come to the attention of the Director that these materials, both mechanical and organic, are called on to bear too much weight. Consider this little automaton. It tends to topple over on itself. The gears and pistons whirr and clank. At last it rights itself and goes on its way. Some say it […]
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Update (for Robert Archambeau)
Dear Members of the Subcommittee: The most recent reports indicate that we are experiencing significant increases in displacement across all sectors. How are we to account for this, and what is the appropriate response? We have double-checked the current icons against the master list. Although we have identified numerous instances of free-floating belief, there is […]
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Memorial Day, 1993
Wire-bound irises peeling pollen. Grackles between plots, restive and dark. Our sister’s birth and death revealed abruptly at her grave: old grief satiated with fresh horror. Baby brother weeps in dread. I bite until I bleed, contemplate a decimation nine years slated. Ardent prayers on grill selection, loaded semi-automatics beside the bed— the root of […]
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Ronald Reagan’s Boyhood Home
Fever measured in chlorine across a screen marked function. Sun on ladder, cleanest ache: stolen tiles in palms of rust.
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Cesarean
Ceremony is god and god is this birdless song of feathers in a cat’s mouth. By god, a mother can get so high remembering, can plummet listening can growl for more or sigh dreamily in three languages. § In her hemorrhaging, ceremony. In a morphine stupor a mother can see god with his bucket catching […]
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Horoscope
In the shallows of a stilled creek, fish eyes suspend disbelief, allow fact its tapdance, truth its sudsy grasp.