Image: The Yellow Phone by Jon Riggs

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RISKY BEHAVIOR, 1959

​Long plaid skirt,
pointed glasses,
maroon loafers
with bright pennies
slipped in:
the young woman
picks up Beauvier, Cather
and Woolf.
 
Baggy painter’s pants,
wire glasses,
construction boots
with sawdust crowding
her bootstrings:
frivolous reading can be
dangerous,
an occupational hazard.

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Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 18 books. Seven of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is the editor of Callisto: A Queer Fiction Journal. His latest titles include The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and online at raymondluczak.com.

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