Bob Lucky


A Pilot for a New Crime Series That Will Never be Made

(Based on Franz Kafka’s “Absent-minded Window-gazing.” Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.)




The Accounting

The Spanish tourist imagines he is speaking Portuguese, and the Portuguese waiter 
imagines he is speaking Spanish. I imagine I know what they’re talking about. It’s all 
context. Someone wants a ham sandwich. Someone else believes a ham and cheese 
sandwich is a better choice. Possibly there’s an allergy to be considered. A glass of wine. 
Coffee. Whatever appears on the table in a dive like this will be a bargain or a rip-off.

               sunset waves scattering light



Notes for a DIY Fairytale

(Based on Franz Kafka’s “An Imperial Message.” Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.)




Apologies to Joe Brainard

I don’t remember my first ‘real’ kiss, the kind where your tongue slips into another person’s mouth. My father 
called it “swapping slobber.”

I don’t remember the first time I had intercourse, which seems like something I wouldn’t forget, something I 
would’ve written down in a secret diary and burned on my 45th birthday because it was too embarrassing to read.

I don’t remember when I couldn’t lose weight anymore without erasing my identity, without giving up everything 
I loved from potato chips to wine and taking up things I didn’t care for such as broccoli and sweating.

I don’t remember the last time I was thin.

I don’t remember when I wasn’t bald. Sometimes I forget I’m bald because the fringe hangs down almost to my nipples.

I don’t remember the birthdays of any of my grandparents. 

I don’t remember algebra.

I don’t remember the first time I heard a bagpipe.

I don’t remember the first meal I cooked for someone. I do remember being poor and living off rice, onions, and eggs. 
But I don’t remember slaving over a romantic dinner for two or whipping up a goodbye breakfast after a one-night stand.

I don’t remember the first book I cried over. The first movie was Old Yeller. I did cry when I got to the end of Eric 
Newby’s Love and War in the Apennines, but that can’t have been the first time. 

I don’t remember the code to my safe. And I don’t remember where I hid the key. I think my will’s in there.  

I don’t remember having a previous life. Perhaps I didn’t. My understanding is that you were someone or something else 
back then. Where’s the fun in that? I’d want to be me in the past.

I don’t remember where I was on the evening of 12 February 1973, but I didn’t shoot no deputy either.

I don’t remember my phone number. When people ask for it, I have to look it up. Maybe I didn’t forget it but just never 
knew it. I hate phones. Don’t call me.



How Stories Get Started

I was strolling along my side of the river ruminating on clouds when I pinched a nerve in 
my left hip, toppled into the river, and was sucked into a whirlpool and spat out on the 
opposite bank. A woman with a name I couldn’t pronounce nursed me back to health although 
many of the locals wanted to toss me back into the river. I still can’t pronounce her name, 
but my attempts amuse her. We got married and started a ferry service. There are people on 
both sides of the river who won’t talk to us, but twice a day the boat fills up. A while back, 
our eldest daughter, who’s no bigger around than a fishing pole, was called a chub. She laughed 
so hard she broke a rib. I didn’t find it funny, but one of these days I’ll tell the story to 
a boatload of people in midstream. They’d better laugh.

slow morning
watching the bobber bob
in the clouds



The Imagination at Work

(Based on Franz Kafka’s “The Street Window.” Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.)

Bob Lucky is the author of Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019). His work has appeared in Rattle, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Otoliths, and other journals. He lives in Portugal.

 
 

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