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Dreams
The Other, Invented Man
For many years — the majority of my life, in fact — acknowledging death’s inevitability exerted little psychological pressure on me. I had no fear of passing, as they say, from this world into the next, or, assuming no next world exists, simply entering oblivion.
December 2018
V.I.P. Tutoring
For a term paper I demanded a Louis Vuitton purse. For a take-home midterm, a Tiffany bracelet.
July 2018
Willie
No one in prison is ever coming back. Once we’ve served our time, everything is finally going to work out. We’re all going to stay in touch, so we can share our good news — except I’ve been giving out a fake phone number this entire time. I’m embarrassed to know these men, eyewitnesses to a shameful period of my life I can’t wait to live down: two years in prison for a nonviolent offense.
July 2017
Sometimes The Dream
My student blushed all over his bald head / as he confessed, laughing, / “I have those adultery dreams — you know, the ones / where you wake up in a cold sweat: / Thank God, thank God, / I didn’t mess up my whole life!”
March 2017A Visitation
It was very kind of my ex-husband, / dead these dozen years, / to show up in my dream last night.
November 2016The Same Movies
He never listens to my dreams. “Dreams / aren’t real,” he says dismissively. And he’d prefer it / if I filled out a rebate for a toothbrush instead of starting another / poem.
February 2016April 2015
I’m looking at today’s impossibly long to-do list. To accomplish everything on it will take more than twenty-four hours. To not accomplish everything will leave me ill-prepared to leave town tomorrow.
April 2015The Empty Dress
March sky the color of smoke; / Carla’s red hair blazed, a torch song of hopeless hope / as she powered her wheelchair through the Vintage Fair / to help me find a wedding dress.
September 2014April 2013
Why do I imagine that the way I shape these sentences matters to anyone but me? So what if my writing is published? Hell, I’m the publisher!
April 2013
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