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Night’s endlessness taps at the mind,
my jet lag a constant drip down the windows.
Because I am here for a month, a girl returned
to her mother, I let myself go soft

I was walking down a long, utterly deserted sandy bay beach called the Gut. It was just over some dunes from a well-traveled walking trail on Great Island, which is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore, at the very end of Chequessett Neck...

There was not going to be a funeral. On that point, Grady was perfectly clear.

When I got off the plane, he sneered. “Private jet?”

“No, bumfuck. A Cessna’s just the largest plane that flies to this mud pit.”

What about the man who cannot touch 
anyone without them morphing 
into the only woman he loved and lost? Not recklessly,
but like a river diverted by a stone’s weight, 

Holland spent Wednesday building a privacy fence for a tiresome academic couple in Barton Hills. Pressure-treated posts, horizontal cedar boards, stained and sealed, it was his third that week. 

Nothing can stop the dogs
from barking, not even

the moon’s new dress.
 

Adam Ekberg has described his body of work as an “alchemy of sorts.”

To win a free mattress, lovers must sleep 
hidden and apart behind a wall to discern 
each other by the cadence of their breath. 

Soon the first cars will arrive for Mass. I can picture them floating down the streets of our city, this suburb of Los Angeles populated by gladsome old people and families with small children and a murky middle swath to which my husband...