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She could not remember what Past and Present stood for.

The pain lithified to numbness, and she recalled the time of his courtship.

My friend Angela, who is also my roommate, got me into stripping.

What humanity needed was that gravity-defying miracle, the bird.

Chase Twichell

What’s a man supposed to do when his best friend is a falcon?

He glowered even as a little child. Maybe because he has your bad eyes.

He didn’t mind, he insisted, that he loved her more than she loved him.

Who was responsible for my father not living up to expectations?

You retell the story and I wait for my cues, when to smile, nod.

And that girls came to his house all the time, cheap girls from the docks.

Sixty-year-old veins look like giant roots breaking through earth’s skin.

She commands, under her breath, You must be the son.

But too much rain can translate anything to unspeakable.

The urge to be a tiny bird upon a tiny limb, maybe a bridled titmouse.

I love scientists. They’re trying their hardest. And they just want love.

The dove calls from far away in itself to the hush of the morning

I am visited daily by unrelenting spirits evoking my accumulated flaws.

And both of them standing there in late afternoon light, looking back.

Lebanon’s sky was full of stars. The sky here doesn’t have any stars.

It’s the roll-up-your-sleeves hour, when you have to make a living.

You can stand on the edge and tremble with fear or risk your life.

Dan Gerber reads poems of boyhood, and from the end of his mother’s life.

She takes her hand to my scalp: eyes close as if tasting lemon cake.

Tanya jokes that she comes to the East Coast now only for funerals.

I tried to cheer my brother up by reminding him all clowns die too.

With cane in hand I felt a twinge of superiority to the crutch people.

I have been enshrouded for months by the weak winter sun.

We’re tired. In bed, we hold hands. We watch TV. But do you want more?