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Cody Shrum

Kansas Writer and Editor

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Recent Publications

Here are links to some of my most recent publications

Image by Yifan Gu

Good Neighbors

HAD, June 27, 2024

They wanted to be good neighbors, so when the apocalypse finally came and nukes fell from the sky on big cities, leaving their small town relatively safe and unbothered aside from all the ash raining down, they volunteered to sacrifice themselves to spare the rest of Glenrose St. when the gang of marauders inevitably rolled through town pillaging ...

Bathroom Tiles

The Roto Rooter Guy Attempts to Fix My Toilet

The Hooghly Review, June 16, 2024

I lean against the doorway, arms crossed, one hand feeling my untrimmed chin hair. How else should you stand when a stranger is fixing your toilet? Of course, we don’t make eye contact. He’s in his forties, wears blue jeans tucked into boots, an old green t-shirt stained from chemicals. I pretend I’m not watching him work. He snakes my old toilet that won’t flush anymore. I think of someone giving big game animals enemas.

Image by Ella Christenson

Good Times, Bad Times

Major 7th Magazine, Literary Mixtape Vol. 16

He was high with his brother and friends

that night—their corner of the bowling alley 

reeked of grass.

The lights above their lane flicked

like lightning cracks in storms back home,

blurring the scuffed shapes of pins

ready to be knocked down

in a popping crash of thunder.

Image by Keenan Barber

Signals

BULL, May 1, 2024

All around crickets sing in rhythm with the starlight, the pre-winter air so thick with Kansas that the sounds cascade. I think: I’ve needed this; I’ve missed this feeling. This air, these sounds, even this carcass, both of us occupying this moment.

Image by Todd Trapani

Zenith

Cleaver Magazine, Issue 43

Four of them were out that night: two brothers and a couple. They’d been howling at the moon, driving around, being kids—senior year, winter break. Wattles Road was just outside town, nobody around to bother them. The sky hanging over the town was dull gray, its belly full of snow.

Image by Etodayn

The Batman of Perry County

Identity Theory, October 6, 2022

It started off as a joke. Some guy in town started showing up to crime scenes dressed in a Batman costume. The cape was made from a black cloth, and where the neck and shoulders met, his skin showed. The boots might have been Wolverines from Wal-Mart...

Stars

"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."

William Faulkner

Contact

Kansas City, USA

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