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The Thing That Links Bataille With Beckett

by Patrick Rogers

I want to squeeze through the aperture, announce arrival and long past the point in time I thought I might die early, a ghost image lingers beneath the image, and though I know it to be untrue, winkingly, we, my wife and me are single-handedly upholding the economy; just got back from the store with a new weed-whacker.

 

After work I look at my watch then watch my co-workers work out, Jose says cause the world isn't open. The pump company keeps sending pump parts to recycle; the sign company signs; the window company windows; it must be summer, the junk companies send old barbecues, but I say it isn't summer until I see the first iridescent green dragonfly alight on a purple thistle flower growing up through the crack where the pavement meets the building.

 

And my wife and I, we are past the point of eating cereal straight out of the box. We marvel the technological advances in weed whacker science, and yet we still go to bed eating cherry sours. I say the world is wide open: just look through all these windows I have, we be rich. Look, just yesterday I sat in the Target bathroom staring at one out of skew tile for much longer than it should take one to sit in a Target bathroom.

About the Author

Now that Patrick S. Rogers operates a truck scale at a non-ferrous metal recycler in Portland Oregon, he feels imposter syndrome with his Poetry MFA in Creative Writing from Portland State, until a lit mag like Propeller Magazine or The Gravity of the Thing decides to accept one of his poems. His wife Wendy Bourgeois, also a poet, assures him his 2 Boston Terriers, Chico Party and Dot-Dot, as well as his cat, Kurt Russel don’t care about the truck scale or the MFA.

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