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The Painted Alley

Fuse

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Jazz tonight…cold winter tonight…visions of Kansas bonfire nights tonight…hellish thoughts tonight…who says the tenants will be removed tonight…Langston Hughes rhythms tonight…want of alcohol tonight…if the landlord should return tonight…if the bill remains unpaid tonight…silent meditations of dreams tonight…apodictic speech to shadows tonight…if the proletariat gathers strength tonight…if the tension becomes condensed tonight…Emily Dickinson seclusion tonight…transforming … Read more

Grocery List from a DeSoto Jail

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Felt like a field trip except for the manacles.Fresh air out the car window.Down a two lane highway through countryside to courthouse.Past corporate candy factory.Is that chocolate in the wind?He could’ve worked there instead of this.After all these years. Day two of the trial. Voir dire.Picking off jurors as best as they can.Attention wanders past … Read more

EVIKT

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The streets are paved in the shadow of a hustle you can’t see, only feel. There’s a hole in the wallet where money falls out just as fast as you stuff it in. Fat-cat looking out of the tower doesn’t come down to pick your pocket. He sends word down through a memo to his … Read more

Notice

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The shades pulled low in the Rundown. Janitor scrubbing the towers top to bottom. Disinfecting seats of power and of defecation. Wiping receivers of oily prints. Evikt imagined them in the daylight; the drones with their prints all over the scene of the crimes, on keyboards and dry-erase porn; what she called the mailroom stockade … Read more

Noir Blanks

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Street lamp. Buzz. Flicker. Highlighting rain.Clicking heels on steps. Stares. Stubstoes, cigarettes. Smudges lipstick. Lighter flicks.The nudge. Twisted neck in the crick.The river’s fresh till.Raging current. Swept under.Push and shovel. Driftwood oar. Faint waftof burning dock. Tragic pile-ons. Evidently evidencewill only be spoken, not photographed.The river’s fresh till.Mistrial and error. An air of mysterybare in … Read more