SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Thirteen
BOB LUCKY
On Being Early
I've been premature
since birth. My mother
found me waiting outside
of school for the beginning
of fifth grade. I graduated
from university when I was still
in diapers. My fiancée, aware
of my proclivities, showed up
early for the wedding, but
by then I had remarried
and raised two children.
I retired soon after
I entered the civil service.
No one had a bad word –
any word, really – to say
about me. Although I often ate alone,
I never missed a meal
in my life. I suspect I'm dead.
What's Left
I dreamt of being shortchanged but at lunch I was overcharged and now
my goal is to learn if one thing leads to another or another thing is more
or less the same when it comes to getting screwed
You wanted to make a point so you poked me in the chest with a finger and
in the eye with a thumb and in the thigh with a butter knife and in the heart
with an apology I didn't have the guts not to accept
A swarm of angry helicopters looking for the helipad we haven't yet built
for the hospital that is the dream of a woman who hasn't been born yet
buzz and whir and whir and buzz in what's left of my mind
One Can Only Wait
An invisible moon if you can imagine such a thing
spied on us as we beat the stove with wooden spoons.
Eyes in the sky you said eyes in the sky but it was
an image hard to imagine unless one believed in gods
and since I don't, I made myself a god and imagined
tapioca pudding and basil seeds in exotic drinks
but that didn't turn out well for the stove or the wooden spoons.
I prayed to the moon to tell me what happened to you
and where you went. One can only wait so long for an answer
to one's prayers. And the stove is begging for its life.
Bob Lucky lives in Portugal. He is the author of Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018; the winner of James Tate Poetry Prize), and My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019). His work has appeared in Rattle, MacQueen's Quinterly, Otoliths, Die Leere Mitte, SurVision, etc.
