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The people with pebbles go home to frolic under the detritus of the day.

It takes a strong woman to make any sort of success in the West.

Ma didn’t believe in slapping. It was what common people did.

Sing so dogs bark, oxen bolt. Sing so a girl walks out on her lover.

The tomatoes weren’t there. She looked again at the ground.

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

The local madman’s been here even longer, lying across the sidewalk. It’s no sin, all who hurry past his babble: no word-salad unlocks God.

Between me and the sky is a screen door and a whole mess of wind.

Flies at our dinner—Won’t eat much sings the tiny ghost of my mother.

No parent has yet been born who can save a child from childhood.

Men like me and my brothers filmed what we planted for proof we existed.

Little footage, this plot, where it thrived at first, then ghosted away.

No one’s alone. Men kill for this, or for as much. And what of the dead?

We spread. Kneel. We’ll come out missing parts. This we know.

One said she heard the jazz-band sob when the little dawn was grey.

We’d hit something in the dark which—bang!—was there and gone.

In the backyard I submerge myself in a bathtub of soil, soak with the hose.

I was dusty, my ponytail all askew and the tips of my fingers ran red.

Euclid stands in front of his lover’s door, open to the last hours of light.

Where my mom was wasn’t never far from the Myrtle Beach Days Inn.

I could go in for some pie why the hell not, there’s so little time.

“We’re not like other species,” you say, a novelist at night.

You’re standing too close to a lit house which could be yours—is it yours?

Hear the voice of life telling you something from the inside out.

Before he started spraying he would hand her the mask to put on.

I love it—watching gray light bleed out over the makeshift bed on the floor.

A goddess was offended; her altar required my virgin blood.

But too much rain can translate anything to unspeakable.

My lust works like the tides pulling in reverse, controlled by a simple ballast.

With a hammer well aimed, try to destroy the whole with a single blow.