Freeze Frame Ophelia
by Stuart Snelson

FOR as long as he could remember, he had been able to achieve states of sexual arousal in contemplation of the cadaverous. To qualify: he craved the televised dead—women, actresses, supine on the coroner’s table—not the actual dead. This, he felt, was an important distinction; what separated him from the deviants.
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You’re so talented to balance the white lies and the elegant smiles that mask your face at Night, making people fall in love with the idea of the woman you could be. They forgive your sin in the morning.

He told me to never come back

but I went back last summer
& I shot him six times in the back

I went to the head doctor
In Idaho

for running from every home I had

It wasn’t that bad, he told me to read Faulkner

I went to the head doctor
The medicine man
The existential crisis crayon
The truthful sparrow