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Please look away from Mars dangling so angry in so much darkness.

I care only about the little body wiggling in that plastic bassinet.

I like to take little sips of the horror, morsels of poisoned meat.

Her father is important in his village and has three wives.

I felt nothing, which was cool, totally cool with me. For my blood was cola.

Every touch electric, every taste you, every smell, every cry.

Some days he thinks he has patients to see, meetings to attend.

Diane Kirsten Martin

Your face is a grain of rice, one small nothing on the world’s horizon.

shoulds & shouldn’ts unwound now to dids & didn’t

You are so small and fragile now. A shell you cradle in your open palm.

Every morning I wipe the sweat from the hollow of my master’s throat.

Why had she asked him to come along, someone she did not even know?

The cicada will crawl up a tree and leave the murmur of skin.

Anne Marie Rooney

The neighbor needs his blaring-music his car-cocoon of sound

I wanted to tear away at the fabric of my pants, dig open my skin.

What we know of love between species we learn from the bones.

The human heart is far more intricate than any single term can describe.

The waitress looked us over, wondering, I guess, if we were famous.

Is there anything that hasn’t been sold yet? If it’s true then let’s celebrate.

In medical school they forgot to tell me about caring and feeling.

Yes, the race of children possesses magically sagacious powers!

How, like a dream, all the world’s characters are aspects of me.

Lately it’s getting harder to say the true thing, to find solace in nature.

“That pool,” Kenny said, breathing harder. “I’m telling you, it’s magic.”

Lynette had stepped on something sharp. There was blood.

They say it is the soul that rises, not the body. But the body does rise—

Lufthansa lifts off under me. The set sun disinters, a fanned cinder.

An owl, as large and incongruous in the night sky as a flying man.