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LOVER
There is a moment just after the lights are turned off, when the ticking of the clock on the nightstand is amplified, reverberating off the skylights, when the heat of your body is a blanket from which I never wish to emerge.
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SENSING NIGHT
“Turn on the light so I can hear you,” she says, and I reach for the switch across the room. “Please whisper,” I respond “and I may be able to see my way to the window.” I draw up the shade and in the dim glow of the night’s light I feel the braying of…
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AUBADE
The sun peers through the skylight, sneaks catlike up the comforter. He strokes her cheek, they are drawn together, lips touch, toes twine, hips press, fingers trace, the mattress is a world of infinite gravity. Downstairs the cat paces angrily, the coffeemaker thirsts for beans.
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FALLING IN LOVE, WALES
I I fell deeply in love with her, I standing in a small jewelers shop in Bangor Wales on a November morning. In truth, cradling a small silver Celtic cross in my hands I knew then that I, taken that plunge within moments of our meeting and recognition was all that remained. II We poets stood…
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KNOWING
She wants to know if I could be an animal which would I choose. Part of me wants to answer panther – sleek, black, catlike eyes glowing in the night – but never coyote, crawling out of the hills in search of rabbits darting through the sage, never the trickster. I am an animal, I…
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INTERACTIVE
He slides into the bed after she is long asleep. It is a well rehearsed dance, and she senses his presence deep within her dreams. He leans into his wife, traces his finger tip down from her temple, along the line of her jaw, into the hollow of her neck. In this dream she…
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SPEAKING IN TONGUES
She said you should try astral projection. I said I have tried transcendental meditation and even a bit of EST. She said that biofeedback was better than most of the drugs she remembered using. I said that tequila took far less practice if you could stand the inevitable hangover. She said she thought that dying…
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BUENOS AIRES ON THE GENESEE
If this were Buenos Aires, if I were Borges, it would all make a great deal of sense. A man, older, and older still if you look closely, walks into an elegant hotel bar. A jazz quintet is playing, straight up, trumpet, piano, guitar, stand up bass, drum kit. The older man is wearing white…
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THE FINAL? TRANSCRIPTS OF ENTRIES FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN
ENTRY: March 23, 1992 Damn David, what was he thinking? I should be over at Shirley’s playing mah jongh, but no. Ma, you need some adventure in your life. Like I need hemorrhoids, I need this. Schvitzing like a fountain, I’m the queen of Mardi Gras. Who is he kidding? I’m a Jewish dishrag…
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THREE MORE TRANSCRIPTS OF ENTRIES FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN
ENTRY: March 27, 1971 So, finally he’s here. Nine months, what God, another joke? Okay, she ate the damned apple, so stick it to the snake. But what would you know, another man. For six hours I’m lying there, dying from pain before the shmendrick walks in like some king, smiles at all the cutesy…