The Deathbed Version

Scott Zieher
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Local Boy Finds Rhyme with OrangeDoor-hinge! Loses Fight for Life in Hospital. As we go to press—last minute news from East to West—Canadian student kills the infamous trickster who, with his company cronies, went to Schenectady by car. These were among his final freedoms. At Schenectady in synecdoche, he clanked the planks. His removal from the hotel to the hospital was made at the suggestion of the manacles and high wires. Our mystifier braved death by the blows of a strong Montreal student who was stupid according to accounts of several eyewitnesses. Crossing the northern border was our hero’s demise, his nemesis. But no man-made device could keep him bound. Only the audit of a young Quebecois man’s fisticuffs, god-given killers of the American favorite, afforded the interruption and, ultimately, the final autopsy. A quick succession of blows burst his belly. He died from poison in the widening gyre and the unwobbling pivot. He died with suspicious hair for our times. For his times that coif was Algerian in the Wisconsin dust. Only colors don’t rhyme. And eagle and owl together, then, dismember him. He is survived by our Holy Mother of the Pregnant Pause, who understands that art is long but not always why a headstone need be so costly. Four roses, white roses and cash donations will be handled Thursday at the Elks Club on Whiterock Avenue where it intersects with Arcadian at dusk, sharp. A memorial service remains to be announced. We still need an echo for silver and a proper word to balance purple.

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