In a public/pirate partnership, the galleons build themselves. Who’s to say if it’s smooth sailing? I haven’t got my sea legs yet. Too busy adding wow to my overcrowded decluttering agenda. I love merch, so it’s hard to know whether I should keep the pins and needles and discard the needles and pins, or vice versa. Like the suspension of disbelief, this week, I’m shadowing myself at work. No, you go on ahead, I’ll catch up. To be perfectly honest, over all these seafaring years, I’ve grown a little lightning-prone. Sure, I’ve got impressive dance moves, even if being a buccaneer is to regret not having more limbs. Although every pirate must put on his or her britches one leg at a time, Lady Justine says she admires the way I’ve embraced one-armed hobbies, the kind that may, like fencing, leave me simultaneously single handed and headless. It doesn’t take a genius to walk the plank, I told her. You ought to know, Flat Top, she breezily responded. Shiver me timbers.

Brad Rose

was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of three collections of poetry and flash fiction, Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015), de/tonations (Nixes Mate Press, 2020), and Momentary Turbulence (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). His fourth collection, WordinEdgeWise, is forthcoming in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press.

Five times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and twice nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, his poetry and microfiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, Clockhouse, Hunger Mountain, Sequestrum, Folio, decomP, Lunch Ticket, 45th Parallel, The Baltimore Review, Cultural Weekly, Into the Void, Miracle Monocle, Right Hand Pointing, and other publications. His story “Desert Motel” appears in the Best Microfiction 2019 anthology.

Poet’s website: http://bradrosepoetry.com

A list of his publications

Selected readings by the poet