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ARRIVAL
He arrived this afternoon, but she stayed only briefly and then departed silently. I did not see her arrive, did not sense his stay but am certain he was there, just as I am certain he has never been here. When she is here, you cannot see her, when she is gone, your memory is…
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CHECKOUT LINE
Time seems frozen in the checkout line stuck between the Mars bars and the tabloids, you wonder how Liz could survive a total body liposuction, and further details of how OJ killed in a moment of lust. The old woman in front rummages in her change purse certain she has the eighty-seven cents, the coins…
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COGITO
She said, “I truly think that a large part of your problem is that you spend too much time thinking about what other people think of you.” He wasn’t inclined to agree, but she did think that so he had to give it consideration. “I don’t think so,” he replied, “but if you think so,…
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AGING
She would have been, what … does it matter anymore, frozen in time at that last age before time ceased to matter and images became locked and only the viewer grew older but glad at least for that. The only thing worse than getting older is not she once said, then as was her fashion,…
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HAVING WRIT, MOVED ON
She says she sees the whole book in her head before she kills it putting pen to paper. It is there, she says where it dies immovable on the page. I invite the words onto the page as well and hope they take a life of their own expressing my intentions if not my thoughts…
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AMOUR
A voice clear, jazz straight up in six strings with no surprises, but sitting next to my wife and lover it is what an evening wants in much the same way as a night in the heart of winter demands spooning beneath the blanket pulled up to our chins the outside world, having ceased to…
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ANOTHER GHETTO
She sits in the bookstore cafe her head covered by a linen kerchief bobby pinned to the mass of walnut curls. She cradles the cup of cooling coffee and stares down at the slim book of Amichai, yielding to the Hebrew letters that seem to dance across the page. I sit at the adjoining table…
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ANCIENT HISTORY
He asked her what she did, and the question surprised her. Most didn’t ask that until much later on, but she replied, “I am a historian.” He said, “Isn’t that an odd profession,” quickly adding, “and I don’t mean for a woman.” “It is,” she smiled, “but I fell in love with history as a…
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REVISION
She said, “As we get older we start to come from the place we only wished we were from, and the place from which we came, becomes the place from which we are now glad we never visited.” He said, “As I age, my youth changes, and the things I say I did are increasingly,…
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AMOUR OR LESS
I stumbled in love with you, she said because I’ve always had this great fear of falling. It must come from my childhood, though I can’t recall any specific incident, just the deep bruises my parents left when they fell, without warning out of the love I thought had to last forever.