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Alice in Hell: 13 slithy variations

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1. Having made Alice from one of the Mad Hatter's ribs, Humpty Dumpty told her she could do anything, except speak. “How bothersome!” she said.2. In the church, Alice was horrified to be presented with a talking lamb. “EAT ME!” it bleated and, as the…

Commander of the Armies of the Four Winds

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"Commander of the Armies of the Four Winds" concerns a nightmare endured by Commander Daniel Bennett of the San Diego Police Department after he is assigned to recover the stolen Necromancer Artifact, which purports to invoke nefarious spirits imprisoned

The Incident

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There are some I don’t recognize. My gaze lingers for a second. It’s bad business this.

Eloise

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Even at five years old, I could tell that Eloise was haunted by ghosts that shook her core, leaving her dangling and seeking stability in slowly repeating her compulsive routines.

by the sound of it

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cicadas run our furnace

Happy Christmas to my quantum mechanic-

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this elegant silver wrench/ which from the opposite side/ becomes a golden Phillips-head

Alfamadog

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It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…

Hey, Boys, Bandits!

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I remember one time that summer I was with you (1964) going to a bar in maybe it was Melrose Park, or Northlake, or somewhere along Roosevelt Road closer to Chicago, not as far as Cicero though. I went there with a crazy gear-head named Roger Hudson, wh

You Have No Idea

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“I want you to face the toys!”

Elite Arts Group Names Steve Miller 1st Rock Member

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Miller exclaimed "Somebody give me a cheeseburger!"--a line from one of his hits--and members of the Academy broke out in knowing if subdued laughter.

The Zone of Forgotten Things

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In the zone of forgotten things, everything moves through a weak gravitational field

Edward Ogle the fourth

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Charted stars by the dozens / with a side of frizzle onions / dawn showers us with glitter.

My Daughter On Wolf Hill Farm

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I survived as a brave thought,

These Dreams We Are Having

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It is just a little break from the colicky baby who has finally fallen asleep. Just a little break, maybe a half hour. And the faulty heater, that wolf at the door, knows that and will take his chance. The two of you are lying on your backs, both of yo

13 cyborg poets

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1. Lost in the Vision Matrix, J0hn Clare transmitted a distress signal designed to be audible only to himself.2. T S El10t ran on a complex algorithm that produced seemingly fragmentary results. However, if you run Imagewise an underlying order appears.3. C0ler1dge suffered…

Tariff Happy

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Expose those for whom freedom is greed.

Nocturnes

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You go out on a night with no moon, when all the stars are flush in the sky, when all of everything, even you, is just a shadow moving softly, and I swear, you can hear it, if you listen hard enough. The music. It’s like it’s coming from under the ground.

Everything Foreign

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In college, I made friends with my Jewish roommate. Her name was Leah and she was from Brooklyn. When she asked me home with her for Thanksgiving, she mentioned we could go to synagogue together. I asked if there would be other black people there. "No," Leah…

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

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Eva stepped out of the hut she and Javier shared and slogged through the mud toward the coop to fetch fresh eggs for Javier's breakfast. None existed. Javier became angry when he didn't get his eggs. Eva slowed her pace as she neared the door. She knew wh

Tidbit

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By dawn, she is ready to hunt.

Gentility

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The walls of our shanty were of the standard corrugated rusty metal typical of communities like ours.We did our cooking over a Bunsen burner purloined from the Catholic Boys' School - beans mostly. We did our drinking from bottles of Thunderbird or Old Crow (when…

Brief excerpt from the Fantasy thing I'm writing.

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Lucien Lucien Tidesquall lay almost sleeping amid the soft green grass. His eyes irradiated green midnight under vanquished brows. A plover hovered somewhere in the distance. It reminded him of a poem he had written as a teenager, a haiku that went as…

Rags to Riches to Rags, 1

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1 Al Capone was ruling the backstreets and alleyways of Chicago during Prohibition, and we lived in a little house right next door to a speak-easy. I could peak through our curtains and see right into the bar next door when cops came in to get pai

Sunrise

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The musician’s wife had a roving eye. He didn't care. He liked being married to a wild and crazy woman.

Bear Weather

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Man, this bearskin rug was a big, awkward sonofabitch on his back....

A Sight Worth Keeping in View

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. . . I wanted to put Tiffany out of her misery and mine and shove her in front of the next large vehicle hurtling down the drive-through lane . . . .

Who Set Off the Liberal Detectors?

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I sense that I may have won a few hearts and minds with my stirring peroration. "Can I get anybody a Republican Party beer koozie to take home?"

A Losing Hand

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A group of us from work are playing cards at a friend's house, so when my brother Jimmy calls, I take my phone into the other room. I already know what it's about, really the only reason he ever calls these days.“Look, I hate to ask,” he begins, the way he…

Staying With Mattie

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I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…

Missing Her

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When the teacher was out of the room Myron pretended to play with himself, saying, “down boy” and smiling to the nervous gasping and fake coughs from the other classmates and, since he's my close friend, I think he does silly stuff like this to contend with…