DEAD MAN PLUS INDIFFERENCE In the fading light of a city block, a soul’s stretched out on the bed of a second floor tenement, smeared with goo that attracts insects, shiny black things mostly: one that crawls across his lips as if testing his breath for takeoff, another with a wobbly gait like a drunk on a spree that finally drops into his earhole. On all sides – percussive indifference – staircase trampled by incessant feet, room above a cacophony of chair scrapes, apartment below, an interminable coughing fit, outside, traffic noise and the usual sidewalk hoodlums, loud veterans of their own impatience to be richer than their friends in jail. Dead man’s unmoved by the world around him as he is by the tiny creatures clinging to his skin. In better days, he would…

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Seated on a three-legged stool, Neuheisel inhaled the steam rising from the cup of Costa Rican coffee then with a soup spoon broke the thin crust that began to appear at the surface of the cup. Briefly he closed his eyes then filled the spoon with coffee, leaned over, and noisily slurped it into his mouth. Jenny, the young woman he was training to be a barista, smiled. For a moment he let the coffee sit on his tongue, making sure it touched all his taste buds, then spit it out into a large brass bowl in the center of the table. “Now it’s your turn,” he said after filling her six ounce cup with coffee. Again she smiled, sliding a little closer to the table. “First off, you should identify the aroma. Is it…

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Waking from a Nightmare I am awash in the terrible seas of the night; dream waves lift me and drop me. Every hollow is a deep pit: water for drowning is its floor and I am sure to go under. Gold could be lead in this lack of light, and the sea so big no one could measure its changes. I am rising through blacknesses, drowned in the bleak shutting out of even the sheer blasts of the weather. And as I am rising, utterly lost, the dark water leaching my last warmth you are there soft in the bed beside me, the mercy of your flesh draped exactly on your skeleton. Your body posits axioms of warmth as you draw breath, confident as the geometer in the sand, and though the soldier strike you…

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Not only had Kimmy visited star systems far beyond the ken of her race, but she had left behind, in all viable places, descendants who copulated fruitfully and who lived twice the natural life span of her species. Though she had wished for a corner of the community chambers, what she had been granted was something far more wondrous. The adventure began when Kimmy returned home between trips of campers. There were three shifts and she was on payroll for the entire summer. Though both Ross and Dad had written to her, there was nothing like her familiar hibernaculum to ease her to sleep or to bring on handsome dreams. Sadly, Dad’s handwriting was becoming increasingly illegible. Like many great omnivores before him, he suffered from a combination of Fatty Liver Disease, Lethargy, and The…

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Her name rolls off my tongue like a sweet puff of smoke. She is a potent mix of innocence and caution with vibrant black hair, smooth alabaster skin and a slender willowy frame. She seems completely unaware of her own beauty. And she is here, in my apartment. She was reluctant, at first, to stop by. She had heard far too much about me from a misguided co-worker who had raised the red flag. She wouldn’t say his name, but I knew who did the trash-talking. When time permits, I’ll have a little chat with him, make sure he knows not to stick his nose in my business. She stood there, yesterday afternoon, in the drab grey-carpeted hallway of our stuffy downtown Syracuse office building, her body swaying, reluctance in her soft voice as she…

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