Cody Shrum
Kansas Writer and Editor
Recent Publications
Here are links to some of my most recent publications
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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...
"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."
William Faulkner
