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SIX YOUTHFUL ENCOUNTERS WITH DEATH — JULIE CHEN — CHEAP POP

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The spirit we summoned while Ouija boarding in Kathy’s car, parked outside Chuck E. Cheese, was named “Tqoqp.” He died at age fourteen, a teenage ghost, probably while chaperoning a younger sibling in the ball pit, its fatal rainbow cascades. We asked if he was gay and the pen we’d all hooked our pinky fingers around wobbled toward 6. In hindsight that must have meant the high end of the Kinsey Scale. “RIP JAMIE THE LEAF BUG!!!” is a YouTube video with 10 views, 3 dislikes. A shaky camera follows a hand digging a two-inch diameter hole in the ground with a plastic spork. Another set of hands spills from a Solo cup a bright green bug, its six legs crumpled at acute angles. Death comes at you sharply, precisely. As the displaced soil is sprinkled over the body, and the cup inverted as a tombstone, let’s waste time…Chasing cars…moans a one-hit-wonder, pitch-shifted to avoid copyright infringement. The skater boys next to us dropped a Costco red velvet cake on the ground. We squatted aroun

The spirit we summoned while Ouija boarding in Kathy’s car, parked outside Chuck E. Cheese, was named “Tqoqp.” He died at age fourteen, a teenage ghost, probably while chaperoning a younger sibling in the ball pit, its fatal rainbow cascades. We asked if he was gay and the pen we’d all hooked our pinky fingers around wobbled toward 6. In hindsight that must have meant the high end of the Kinsey Scale. “RIP JAMIE THE LEAF BUG!!!” is a YouTube video with 10 views, 3 dislikes. A shaky camera follows a hand digging a two-inch diameter hole in the ground with a plastic spork. Another set of hands s

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