SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Six
BOB LUCKY
Parenting
Joseph is talking to the goldfish again, and as far as we can tell,
the goldfish is talking back. We can't hear it, but the way Joseph is
nodding and raising his eyebrows and tilting his head, it's clear
that some form of communication's happening. My wife is trying
to convince me, perhaps convince herself, that Joseph has an imaginary
friend, but I say, "Damnit, look! That fish is moving his lips."
"I can't hear anything," she says. "Read his fucking lips!" I say. She's quiet
for a moment as she stares hard at the fish. After a while she turns to me
and says, "That fish doesn't like you." "What have I ever done to that fish?"
I demand to know. "It's not what you've done to the fish," she says.
I wake up
on the wrong side of the bed. To be precise:
I wake up underneath a bed.
Never having been underneath my bed before, I can't say with certainty
it is my bed, and I'm trying
to determine why I'm here. Has my boss come home
unexpectedly lusting for that butterfly
tattoo whose wingspan covers his wife's ass
like a Technicolor Mothra?
If this is my house, is there a burglar prowling
downstairs? An axe murderer clomping
up the stairs? I sense Freud may be sitting in a corner
taking notes. Is this a test? Are there monsters
beneath the bed? But wait, I'm the only one
beneath the bed. If I come out, will I
frighten some poor child? I don't want to
frighten anyone, but if I don't figure this out
soon I'm going to make a big mess.
Bob Lucky is an American living and working in Saudi Arabia. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous international journals, including Flash, Rattle, Modern Haiku, KYSO Flash, Haibun Today, and Contemporary Haibun Online. His chapbook of haibun, tanka prose, and prose poems, entitled Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), won an honourable mention in the Touchstone Book Awards. His chapbook titled Conversation Starters in the Language No One Speaks won James Tate Poetry Prize 2018 and was subsequently published by SurVision Books. His latest book is My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (2019).
