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BeautyI can’t wear the same outfit in public twice. Not because the tabloids will judge me, but because nothing I wear outside of the ten-foot high electrified fence that guards my house ever makes it back in one piece. Once, when I was feeling particularly masochistic, I looked up how much scraps of cloth that had touched my body were going for on eBay, and it made me sick.
My hair goes for more, though, which is why I have so little of it left. Most of my money goes towards wigs, to hide the bloody mess that is my scalp, and makeup to hide the blotchy mess that is my skin. The line between a blessing and a curse is thin as the thread on a fairy-tale spindle. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
What Town? What City?By J. Ray Paradiso QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: Originally published at Dime Show Review. I was standing in a car. A car on a train. A train like Metra’s North Line to Kenosha. And the train was outta control. Like a Mexican jUmPiNg bean. Moving faster, then s…l…o…w…e…r, then faster. Every-which-way.
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Poe’s Annabel Lee Dearly departed, your face fitted inside the ornate filigree frame. Your feathered hat surrounds a rawboned face. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Revolutionary SuicideI want to change the world, Be the revolution, make the elite curl. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
BeachedI was not biologically related to Uncle Max. When Uncle Max died from prostate cancer, a Nash cousin asked me to a party of Nash women. My cousin wanted me to speak to a group of grieving women to attend the spoken word, open mike night at The Black Swan Tavern. After Uncle Max’s funeral, the usual hagiography in the church, and the convivial reception in the church basement, which was wheelchair accessible, my Nash cousins wanted me to get in front of the microphone in The Black Swan Tavern and tell a story. My cousin pushed my wheelchair through the bar to the microphone for a Nash tradition, oral storytelling in the aftermath of a funeral. Tell the whole nightclub, including beer sodden patrons, who would probably rather listen to live rock music or dance tracks from a techno music DJ, with cool repartee, what I knew about Aunt Quinn and Uncle Max: how Aunt Quinn met Uncle Max; how Aunt Quinn claimed he saved her life.
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