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Made in America
If I were a less sane person I would probably stalk
Zoey Deschanel. After stalking her from nine to five,
I would come back home to my wife and daughter
and tell them about my day. “I stalked Zoey, but I
never saw her,” I’d say. “You’re just not trying hard
enough,” my wife would reply, “don’t give up.” After
glaring at me for a moment my daughter would say,
“Why don’t you just find a real job? No one’s going
to pay you to stalk Zoey Deschanel.” So I’ll tell her
about fame, about the things in this world that aren’t
real and the rain and the empty river in a dream. “I’m
not doing this for money,” I’ll explain, and she’ll turn
away from me and back to her strawberries, pulling
a plump red cone from the blue bowl on the table.
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Jose Padua’s first book, A Short History of Monsters, was chosen by Billy Collins as the winner of the 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and is out from the University of Arkansas Press. His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in many publications. He has read his work at Lollapalooza, CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Public Theater, the Living Theater, the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, the Split This Rock festival, and many other venues. After spending the last twelve years in Washington DC and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he and his family have moved slightly north to Lancaster, PA. [Author photo by Maggie Padua, Oct. 2022; this poem originally appeared in Live Mag! #17]
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Zoe Deschanel mural on an abandoned brewery in East Berlin
Go to Source
Author: Terence Winch
