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Cranshaw Engages in Debate

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They were discussing reincarnation, what animals they would come back as. "I'd be a vole," Cranshaw said. Is a vole even an animal? Connie asked.

Passings

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Perhaps my grandparents, Fred and Lela, when they were growing up....

Nocturnal Bypass

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As I fall to the ground I realize that in a few moments I will be experiencing a new kind of pain. The last pain. The last pain I will ever feel.

The Blue Jay

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His mother hated blue jays, hated them with a passion she usually reserved for no-count trash who drank beer on their front steps and worked on their cars in the street.

Cancer Always Calls Collect -- Part 23 --- Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

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In the end nothing could bring him back because I tried. All those weeks and months, yet all I have left are the tears and memories. He said when he asked the final questions to those in charge he was confused.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 6

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My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just b

Lullaby

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I never meant to shipwreck you, I didn't even know I was singing out loud. I just stood on my rock a little too boldly, and hummed a tune you wanted to hear.

Bridges Are a Lot Like Long Corridors

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Nothing good ever waits at the end of a long corridor.

The Lycanthrope Fun-Time Activity Book

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an elongating boy with butter-yellow flecks in his eyes, and skin patched like a tabby.

PAPA'S TEARS

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Darkness was fast approaching. I stuck out my tongue at Naya, and she reached out as if to grab…

Never Said

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We're at the Park Diner. My dad Tommie is sitting across from me. He looks haggard, tired. His skin is pasty and washed-out. He's not talking, so I'm not talking either, but it doesn't matter because it's hanging there between us.Cancer.Motherfucker.“Don't look so…

The Secret Life

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The silver urn of ashes inscribed with his unknown name.

Building This Thing and That Wall

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The world has long since been bootlegged by madmen. The new invisible con men are the same as the old visible con men, hiding and lying behind their walls of lingering death. There's a weapon wielding demon hell bent on an insane vengeance crawling around…

Fragment from a Paper Story

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While Leif was still very young, his emotions were very easy to read, for they appeared on his parchment coloured skin, named in his mother's writing. When he was seventeen, Leif fell in love. She was a pretty maid, one of the college servants who kept his…

Sleeping Bag Whiskey

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indelicate, as everything arrives at once.

Unclassifieds 1

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*Must have excellent communication skills and be able to talk pretty good.

Ashes to Ashes

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Day by day people went missing. Reports of the ads being answered with a robocall solution to their problems were at first unconfirmed. Yesterday my best friend told me his emotional distress call was going to be channeled into a free trip to what he call

Fantasy Wiring

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In the mechanics of the fantasy, it is essential that the wiring is maintained, all circuits working, every current flowing with the precise measurements, lest the system malfunction and the world completely lost. The engineers are constantly abuzz, constantly understaffed…

Rope & Bone '86

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His shirts he hangs on the back of the chair, one on top the other so they won't wrinkle.

Youngish Professor, or Grad Student TA

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Natty looking in his 2-tone shoes and argyle socks blue blazer with 3 gold buttons on each cuff pale yellow hemp or burlap necktie, of course with a blue shirt (never white!!) long mopish hair hanging on his forehead and a

Mobiles

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My stories are ramshackle; they lurch along in old sweaters with holes and missing buttons, drinking from mismatched cups and saucers.

Pen Pals

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Sitting together at Starbucks, we composed a long love letter which we've been mailing back and forth to each other, signing our name upon each receipt and returning it for the last nine months and it has grown to eighty seven pages, barely fitting in a shoe box.

His Name is Chaos

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Should probably be faster at the cash register

Childbed (cenotaph song)

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Those who don’t die, desire, descend. No song aloft arises from my irk. The seeing chieftain, not of sea, nor sand, nor boat, I till nightfall stammer alive, dig boneless trenches against tiding dregs and lathe, hunt, wallow, plow the hours, call in awei

3 Poems Of Broken Hands And Lonely Drones

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another lonely drone holding still

Alyssa

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Before the paint spikes Coney Island to the wind, I walk home through the strum of a shield, colder than the one he left behind. For the hour I sprawl along the sidewalk in her laugh, crater's shadows for Wonder Wheel, he is midnight sun in The Last Waltz. Where the glow…

Trumping the Ground Zero Mosque

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My third Rule of Success—and I may not have these in exactly the right order–is always get a pre-nup!

Movie Conference, 1963

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Suddenly the producer, Irving, tosses a new idea into the discussion, an idea for a possible film. Then the writer, Herbert, does the talking. He performs, in fact, puts on a one-man show. The idea! The idea! It's…

February 2012 Denver, COLORADO

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"You don't need the gun," Dean said. "Bring me a bottle of peroxide and some duct tape."

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

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It starts with a letter, down the back of the couch, ending, ‘love, always.' I read only the kisses aimed at me - a firing line running off the page. How long has that letter hidden there? It secreted itself in a corner of the house…