Bob Lucky
Make-up Alphabet Soup
The letters weren’t yet ripe but we picked them anyway, before the storm arrived. We knew what to do, how to form words. The chopping and dicing. Simmering. Seasoning. That required some discussion. Cilantro vs basil, and a disagreement over the pronunciation of basil. And then the slurping. Later, after we cleaned up, we had nothing to say. The storm had passed.
On Friendship
I can’t find my copy of Essays by Lydia Davis. I can’t imagine I left it in a café or on a train. Which means someone I consider a good friend is also a thief. I’m going to set a trap — buy another copy of the book and always have it out where he can see it when he visits. To remind him how much his friendship has cost me and guilt him into returning the stolen copy. Then I can give him one as a gift.
On the Wise Use of Time
My favorite café has the worst service in town. The waiters, from the hunched to the pimpled, wear white shirts, black trousers and vests, and drooping bowties, lending the establishment an Old-World charm, beyond which there is little charm. The elderly waiters stare out the window with its case of day-old pastries and dream of retirement. The young waiters crowd in a corner and work on lines of a rap song they’re convinced will land them on the next Eurovision Song Contest. I go there every morning to work. It takes an hour, a very productive hour, before I can order coffee and buttered toast. Paying can be an ordeal. Sometimes I don’t.
On Translation
I received the report on the scan I had done a week ago. I read it in the original Portuguese, noting that there were parts of my body I had no idea existed and that some were enlarged, some deflated; some had cysts, some stones. Thinking I might have missed something, I put the report into a translation app. The English version was equally unclear to me. Just for a laugh, I translated it into Greek so there was no doubt.
On the Meaning of Everything
Inexplicable phenomena explain everything.
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, Die Leere Mitte, SurVision Magazine, and other journals. He lives in Portugal.
Make-up Alphabet Soup
The letters weren’t yet ripe but we picked them anyway, before the storm arrived. We knew what to do, how to form words. The chopping and dicing. Simmering. Seasoning. That required some discussion. Cilantro vs basil, and a disagreement over the pronunciation of basil. And then the slurping. Later, after we cleaned up, we had nothing to say. The storm had passed.
On Friendship
I can’t find my copy of Essays by Lydia Davis. I can’t imagine I left it in a café or on a train. Which means someone I consider a good friend is also a thief. I’m going to set a trap — buy another copy of the book and always have it out where he can see it when he visits. To remind him how much his friendship has cost me and guilt him into returning the stolen copy. Then I can give him one as a gift.
On the Wise Use of Time
My favorite café has the worst service in town. The waiters, from the hunched to the pimpled, wear white shirts, black trousers and vests, and drooping bowties, lending the establishment an Old-World charm, beyond which there is little charm. The elderly waiters stare out the window with its case of day-old pastries and dream of retirement. The young waiters crowd in a corner and work on lines of a rap song they’re convinced will land them on the next Eurovision Song Contest. I go there every morning to work. It takes an hour, a very productive hour, before I can order coffee and buttered toast. Paying can be an ordeal. Sometimes I don’t.
On Translation
I received the report on the scan I had done a week ago. I read it in the original Portuguese, noting that there were parts of my body I had no idea existed and that some were enlarged, some deflated; some had cysts, some stones. Thinking I might have missed something, I put the report into a translation app. The English version was equally unclear to me. Just for a laugh, I translated it into Greek so there was no doubt.
On the Meaning of Everything
Inexplicable phenomena explain everything.
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, Die Leere Mitte, SurVision Magazine, and other journals. He lives in Portugal.
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