Rumpus Originals
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Hunger
I never remembered the significance of that Beatitude, only that hunger— for God, for food—was part of the equation.
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Three Poems
Crumbs — all that’s left of my coffee cake. Plates clatter as they’re loaded in the dishwasher. Ashtrays on the bar. When Hopper painted Nighthawks he didn’t intend to evoke loneliness —a waiter, two men in suits, a woman considering…
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Synanthropia
The mouse moves casually, irrationally, like it is curious. It does not see me yet. It is fat and grey like a mutt is grey. The scream is unlocked, some pre-language gesture at speech. I investigate its texture. Not guttural…
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World in the Hole
When our time zones cooperate, I talk to Savion on the phone. I am, as he is, on the lookout for his mother, however dire our chances might be of encountering her. He has often shown me photos, since my…
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Rage Psalm
Glory to the waiting rooms, clipboards like tombstones. Doctors carving diagnoses into her chest: obese. unwoman. deviant. Praise the paper gowns, thin veils for the body’s indictment.
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Three Poems
I tend not to know how to say when it hurts. Firstly, I don’t know what it is. I wait for the call and no doctor rings. Wait, then, some more.
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The Pastor’s Ex
She was no flapper. Although she could see flapping from here, what with Sara’s daughter’s leather miniskirt dangling fringe on her thigh. She gave the fringe a shake and absorbed the crowded bar, the packed dance floor, the DJ spinning…
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Transnational Dreaming in the Port of Hong Kong
Drawing from memory is acceptable, Hao said. I once went on a trip with my late wife. We went to Norway because she wanted to see whales and I regretted not taking any photos. But many years later, I drew…
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On Drowning
I learned from my mother, passed down from her mother, how to hold inside me a great ocean of sadness because the world is a cruel and inhospitable place. At the age of fifteen, I first told her I didn’t…
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Two Poems
A horse who cannot run is just the fallacy of a horse. Most nights, I shovel familiar names into my mouth like lovers,
