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Introduction

Posted on March 21st, 2017

It is somewhere in the neighborhood of five in the morning and you are standing in the bare bulb light of your narrow counter-less hallway kitchen holding your cat that you’re secretly worried is huffing paint every night and she has just drooled on your t-shirt.  You have been painting the back and only bedroom and, knowing its carpet is not long for this world, have been letting the paint fall where it may the entire time and now nightly you find her in there, on the floor in the middle of a half circle of three paint cans, purring, and you think you’ve created a problem.   So you scoop her up and think about how this is a tender broken-open sort of…

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Sour Mash

Posted on March 21st, 2017

Smokestacks, carnations and ill-fitting suits Dust in gold leaf, hairspray-sheen plastic fruit Billionaire promises lie on heel and crown There’s a darkness on the edge of town Burnt rivers, burnt towns, burnt fields America Foreclosed Makes Great Again® Bankers — factory closers — knead their newest Reagan Her scorched earth harvests quarterly yields Tell her this is how fem’nism feels Investing meaning back to our lives, see Illusions for what they are And so go reach out, censured Walker Evans Touch a starched fabric of reality done scarred Drapes haggard on windows drawn tight Door locks and lost keys, marital rites Forearm fractures, undone sash Hand guns, rags in gasoline Corn muffins, baked beans and sour mash Hides yellowish bruising, black unseen Wealthcare, opioids and cigarettes Back gate…

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Winston Dodge, Monster Hunter

Posted on March 21st, 2017

Winston Dodge spends his winters days up to Millinocket because Millinocket needs him. He paces Congress Street at noon, proud of the sound his boots make on the wet snow. He turns his head from side, looking at things. Looking into shadows. Winston Dodge likes looking into shadows. When the shadows look back, he knows he’s found something worth finding. Winston Dodge is a finder and a fighter. Winston Dodge hunts monsters and he doesn’t like losing. So he makes it a point to win. It doesn’t come naturally.   *******   If you follow the Interstate up past Bangor, you’ll come to a low place where the trees are all dead, standing apart as though they want nothing to do with each other…

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2-23-17

Posted on March 21st, 2017

I watch his strong steady hands. Over and under, pull taut… Make one loop, wrap around it, pull through, tighten. I love watching him tie shoes – my mind always funnels back to my youth, a little girl, learning to tie laces, his hands helping mine to make the loops, to pull the laces tight. I’m filled with memory.   My chest tightens and I try to pull in a deep breath, but it’s shallow, my eyes water and a few drops spill over, running a trail beneath my glasses, which need pushing up as they’re sliding down my nose. My arms are filled with the sweetness of a 6 week old baby girl, I’m sitting on a yoga ball, bouncing, the baby asleep…

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Queer Futurity

Posted on March 21st, 2017

He is entwined around me like an octopus, his legs encircled in mine, his arms twisting around my elbows down to our fingertips which also curl into each other. We are completely warm even though it snows hard outside today. When I breathe in I smell something like baby powder, a smell that is so distinctly his I can’t even find something proper to compare it to. We fall back asleep.   Later that day a friend calls. I am on break at work, but the children are never far, their voices loudly echoing through the halls of my school. She has had two miscarriages. She has had two adoptions fall through. We are both only twenty eight, but her quest to have children…

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Owl Lamp

Posted on March 21st, 2017

I amtrying tolistenclosely.To feeland knowallthe vibrationsof the universe.Spectacular.Granular.They quiver and shakewithoutjudgement. But stillI askthemstupid questions.Questions like: Did I make the right decision?Will I finally be free?Can I reject a false prophet for the true one?Can I earn the highest score on the double-headed snake video game?The highest score of all time? Come on.I really want to.I really want to seemy name bulbed-upamong the highest-scoring babes.I really wantto be one.So cool and popular and brightlike California. So? Well, you’re always getting in my wayand I, like others,like to blameothers. And that is why I can’t afford a ticket to California this year. Look here,Lookie-loo,I, too,live in a Californiazoo.Smoke a rooAnd change my shoeSo I can step lightly throughtoday’s proctoring. Thank goodness that manI had beenexcited abouttexted to break up with mebefore we even…

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Don’t You Shut Out The Lights And I’ll Light Mine

Posted on March 21st, 2017

We promised to keep the lanterns going to tell each other from what way we were headed to give each other enough time to pack a bag and make a bed • I am looking for you at the end of this dock Out in the world. Are you leaving or headed home? I thought we had the lights lit • Those fucking matches seem to have walked away on their own. • The sea currents seem confused messy, the waves are breaking in a way impossible to swim. Gusts are blowing in all directions back and forth, even down Overwhelmed but found. • Unfurling my folded fingers, grabbing for a match The wind takes them loose and fluttering towards land, towards sea. Match…

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