We Are the Ghosts in the Rafters, Murmuring like Doves
The child is below us, but we dare to whisper, knowing the rain drowns us out; it slaps the window, smearing the moonlight to a buttery bridge across the slick black asphalt of the street below. She’s heard us before, easing doors open with a coy, feline nudge to check …
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Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery
I. When Donny was a boy, his aunt caught him taking a five-dollar bill from her purse. She grabbed his wrist and told him he had two choices: she could tell his mother, or she could take him to the church to confess to the priest. Donny chose the priest. …
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Seraphic Clowns and Saintly Mourners, an Excerpt
December 24th 1963 11:50 pm EST. Those who are famous, those who are wealthy, those who are elderly, and those with children arrive early and find privilege in the sitting, in their asses growing cold and sore on the hard wooden benches. Austerity now is necessary for fertility eventually; this …
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Lamentation
After a while you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course. It’s all one long funeral song. – Bob Dylan The house is smaller than Elizabeth remembers, but the …
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Butter
Automatic grocery store doors were fascinating to Darin. At least in that moment. The way they sensed a presence (sometimes a ghostly one) and flung their arms open. The way the mechanical doors made just enough noise – enough to let you know they were spreading and yet not loud …
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Mofe
Mofe carries the weight of his son’s death the way a madman carries dreadlocks on his head; specks of dust caught between tangled strands, crazy knots bludgeoned by the pains of this world. Grief. Mofe holds this grief with all of his brown fur that was once white, standing …
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The Sea Beyond
Rosie was on her knees, scrubbing the bedroom floor when the news about Jimmy came. They sent Willie, Ellen’s husband, to tell her. She didn’t get up when he came in, but sat back on her heels, waiting for him to say what she already knew. “Where did they …
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Jack Pine
Vivian didn’t know how much more she could take. Maury moped around the cabin, hardly going outside, annoyingly underfoot. If he wasn’t sleeping or bothering her, he was plunked in front of the window staring at that damn jack pine, its branches gnarled and lopsided—a Halloween tree, she called it. …
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Growth Hacking
At first, we thought the mango tree was another one of Susan’s shticks. A way to feel good about showing up every morning and motivating us to write code or handle support tickets or cold-call prospects or dream up new marketing bullshit or whatever it was management expected us to …
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