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Excerpts from 'Dispatches from the Front: My Life in NE Portland—diary by JENA RACHEL ROCKWELL (year 08)'

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I'm getting self-righteous here, Dear Reader . . . [hey! wait a second! this is my diary! what are you doing, looking at it, dude! Hit the road! Scram! Vamoose!]

All his things

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All the things that are his.

The Dog's Familiar

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The county sent two crews, one to get Mr. Meyers, the old shut-in, tall and affable, but quiet and bent, like a crooked coat rack with a porkpie atop, the other for his dog, an english setter whom he shadowed like a familiar. I say he was the familiar and

Ineluctable

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I attended the burial of our affair when I found the notebook-maybe it should be called her diary-she had foolishly forgotten, leaving it on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago and I was numbed at first, unsure how to…

The Old Man and the Cigarette

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Flicking the cigarette into the river the man's face becomes soft, as if waving goodbye to the only real attachment that he has felt in decades.

The Judge's Wife Part 6

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—Strip down to your shorts. Put on this gown, open to the rear.

Mezzanine

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I am i said pursued by the feeling of being watched.You are she said -- by yourself. As in a dream, a dream you know you're dreaming. Which changes nothing.We are she said watching from the mezzanine, half-above, at once a part and apart.

Imagining the Reading as Effacement

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What the spaces say// can be heard in the short/ and longer silences

The Bachelor's Hymnal

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OhYou like quiet nights in?I do tooBut we might not get alongbecauseOnly part of youwants silence

Wild Origin

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Seeking your will, instead we found, somehow, a clutch of our own documents; folded under a rubber band gone to rot, muddy strands nestled in the creases.

In Real Time

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We are the same shits/ we were in the Bronze Age

August

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One moustache hair at moustache level on a filmy bathroom mirror. A red velvet spread on a big round bed. Dear Ma: We saw a bearded lady.

The Hunger of the Waxing Moon

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I took advantage of a free period this afternoon to nap. When I awoke, I tasted blood. My tongue was swollen. I checked myself in the mirror and saw twin punctures on my lower lip with pinpricks of blood on each. I winked at my reflection and lifted my li

Word Burglar

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Oh my god - A plagiarizing pony - I know someone must have said that before

Blood Quantum

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I play in the dirt with cattle bones while Mother rattles the sky. She tells me I have my fathers eyes. The words come through bloody fissures in her lips.

Apex

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You left paint and blood smeared on the wall.

Oopsy-Daisy!

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[This story definitely WON'T be appearing in this month's "Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine"!]

The Meeting

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When he leans back from the telescope through which he had been looking, he sports a derby and a Hercule Poirot moustache.

Happy Birthday Sian or How to Fall in Love

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I learned how to fall in love, in one hour, watching The Waltons. John Boy fell in love with Jenny. Jenny fell in love with John Boy. It taught me the right way to fall in love. It taught me the right way to let love go. I was 12 years old. It was a lesson I…

Eve in the House of Mirrors: 13 fragments

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1. On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Eve woke to find herself transformed into a gigantic chess piece made of zeros and ones.2. Eve gazed so long at her smartphone that she found herself falling into it.3. She fell for a time that may have been short or long or…

Forecast for Mid-December

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In the next week or two, the red oak/ will loose and lose its leaves

The Ice Scraper Symphony

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Stay tuned for my next short - Candle Smoke Wishes - COMING SOON ON A MONITOR NEAR YOU!!

How Was Your Afternoon, Dear? 2

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The pool deck was covered with the bloody footprints of resident gawkers.

Oyster

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"Maybe…" he began searching for some comforting wisdom. "Maybe it's like this. Husbands live for their wives. Mothers live for their children. And children...well...until they're husbands or wives, they live for themselves."

Countdown

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My bones will rob me blind, corpuscle by corpuscle.

Zombies In The Time of Nineteen Eighty-Four

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I was watching the bustling crowd below, sipping on a teacup full of Victory Gin when the scream, no a howl, cut through the murmuring of footsteps and telescreens.

Storm Chasers

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“Okay,” I say, “but my point is the only way you’d ever know if someone really loved you is if they put their life on the line when it counts. Otherwise you gotta take their word for it.”

Sayōnara

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He painted a woman on them, identical to the woman that kneeled by his bed.

Decision Mountain

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For decades the land the village sat on had switched its allegiance between two countries.

Cold

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I told her I didn't love her. She said love wasn't important; she wanted to marry a man she could respect.