Tryst mid-afternoonthe hotel corridor is quietoutside our room where feeble lightdulls bleached sheets later on when the sky is dueto erupt and hasten darknesswrapped in a fog shroudI have a fifty-mile drive home but right now I am malleablebeneath your calloused palms I am a well-fed bird eager to settlewithin the coarse and tenderthe flesh-and-bonenest of you Unincorporated Places at night you drive, alert for deer and drunkswhile I gaze west, my retinas gather the glowof stray porch lights and second-story windows  from communities tucked into collarbone hollowsalong the interstate, which reeks of a paper mill some of their names I mispronounce, but you nevercorrect the strange syllables in my mouth Tenuous is the Thread chaos barely constrained by butterfly wings that make figure eights yet tectonic plates gnash their teeth and continents break  could be a low-flying planeor seismic…

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Easter Vigil I had imagined it otherwise.Not as we are, on the white sandpossibly surrounded by peacocks and peahens.I meant the other thingwhich I no longer remember. The year Igor Markevitch diedthe batons of conductorsturned to asps and slithered offuntil spiked to death by the cellists.A pistol cracked in B-flat.Aldo Moro was no more. The cognoscenti raisedtheir little coffee cups;thei rsaucers whiteunfractionable hosts.Pop the trunk: Morois not there, for he has risen.The brigades reddenand limp off, firing Kalashnikovs into hollow desert. Asice locked Lake Como’s secretsdeep within, no one sawMarkevitch descend to Hadesin the form of a bee, orMoro,saints, and Caesarswho swatted him away.The peahen’s voiceis a cry for helpbut Lazarus cannot help her,waiting as he must for his second death,knowing full well what to expect.Romano Prodi staggers from the gravesmiling fatly. He smells of eucalyptus.Like bits of…

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Deception Pass   In the daggered dreams of moonlight, in what cannot wait till morning.   A driver on the bridge’s back, on the way to the worksite’s weary yawn   leaves his car and leaps like hope into water’s frozen hands.   On the spine of Deception Pass, courage leaves prints on the bones   and mercy is late for work.   *** Daniel lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems have been in Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, Western Humanities Review, and others. His poems are forthcoming in West Trade Review, Duende Literary Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Magnolia Review, Isthmus Review, The McKinley Review, Glass Mountain Magazine, Columbia College Literary Review, January Review, Under a Warm Green Linden and Yemassee. His books, “This New Breed: Bad Boys and Gentleman” an…

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