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The first murder had been a half dozen years ago in a warmer city.

A dead body leaned sideways against a wall. Its eyes were open.

One of us broke away, cooled, and died, having never fully lived.

Ajax can answer all this killing only with the killing of himself.

Slice a finger while opening a beer can, fizz the gin high in tumblers.

We press closer to look at a picture: a handcuffed boy leaning toward us.

Let him search, Tricia thought, who knew what he might discover.

He was alongside without preamble. Elephants are not stealthy by nature.

Histories we spin from lust, our tongues heavy and soaked.

My love swims you, your shoulders like hard sails under the green curls.

Professor Flacks could tell you everything about James Joyce.

We did not know at the moment of parting that it was a parting.

In the many pages of the book of love this is only one story.

God was surrounding the chair, leaves flourishing from a sickly tree.

The coverage of the state funeral, black horse bearing an empty saddle.

Our brains interpolate from surrounding images, fooling us.

If life is an open vein, what’s brave about a sleeve-heart, sweetheart?

My “lonelymaking.” Also known as my horrible secret, continent-wide.

In that world I was a fish too eager to enter the nets; here, I’m a river.

A simple line of raging wet nearby, how as a kid I pictured the Nile.

You were drowning in the bathtub. Mother was in her room.

insomniacs gesturing in a cave of neon light the narrative of their lives

After you have read all you possibly can there may be a few lines left.

She only eats condiments, pickles, slices of sharp cheddar.

What will we do without exile, and a long night that stares at the water?

Just because we have birds inside us, we don’t have to be cages.

Wicked fictions wrap a young tongue’s sweet-tipped fibs into fact.

One day, we will all turn into choir girls—all soft and hollow inside.

Not all his children love themselves. Look at little Adrienne.

A homecoming, she says, as if you hadn’t been back in decades.