Ricochet

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  Where one should hear the echo of a duck’s call there is only glazed stillness, the word lake so close to lacquer, lack. Stood at the scum-rimmed edge I said nothing, a friend said listen, but I only heard … Read More

You Can’t Squeeze Blood Out of a Turnip

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  Unless while it’s growing you feed it strips of pork fat crushed with orange   rinds & ginger. Unless you turn the soil with your bare hands & blacken your nails   with its roots. Unless you cook it … Read More

Poem with Zeugma and Dog

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  The old oak in the creek’s bend stands blotted black with songbirds— stripped branches’ lateral buds breaking early-sunset sky— we sounded like them, you and I, when you screeched in the numb night and you ate from my body. … Read More

The Waiting

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  give me any lyre-like thing I’m on my knees what I’m on my knees * the swamp I move through careful your own drowning is at hand * presume breath & you will always be disappointed presume death & … Read More

Singing School Valediction

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  A scarlet breeze buoyed him next to us, his white feather hair a boy’s, giddy and bright for this, what he called, “the immaculate air.” It never crossed my mind the wind could be fostered down to such a … Read More

Prayer for Something Like a Home

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  Let me learn to love this land, the lay of the highways, the maze of crooked one-ways cobbled together in colonial haste. Give me a place to linger, to wait for sirens to drown in distance, for wind to … Read More

The Tennis Ball

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  When I return to the dog, the first thing I see is the teeth. And then the dog disappears. But the teeth remain. Bared. Bereft of dog. The bared teeth. They open wide as if to seize upon the … Read More

The Folded Paper Game

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  Nights Daddy didn’t come, our mother turned down the roast and set out crayons. My sister peeled the rind from a color called flesh. I chose periwinkle like his Air Force ring. Mother stood at the window and blew … Read More

Incident Behind a Garbage Truck

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  Returning home from work, I found myself following a garbage truck as it lumbered south through rush hour traffic, as it maneuvered its rusty armed or elbowed front loader, leaked from the hopper, weaved the threat of its wobbling … Read More

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