Only Let’s Go When Bitten
The lie
As ally
As architecture
Fabricated for personal use
His imperceptible
Impregnable
Strong
Hold
Empathy by rote
Head tweaked on an angle (malfunctioning smile) at the sight of raw emotion
An admirer
Of his own gift
To deflect
As Roman phalanx
No question
Of taking the question any layer lower than one skin in
Humility
Taken on the rocks
With double shot and
Uber driver waiting
No principles
Around pleasure
The mendacious man lives
In HD
Without any clear definition
Solace
He can’t find Where he left off
Or the door that leads there has been bolted
The lighting pulsates
It appears he must stay for a length of time
It isn’t clear for what length of time
He stumbles through the days, losing his way often
There seems no limit to his endurance
He believed there were only two alternatives, up the line and down the line
One day he realizes the lines have curled around him
As he circles, he isn’t sure if he’s awake or asleep
He senses nothing disagreeable will occur if he keeps circling
Already he’s in a placenobody understands
He wishes to be in a placeno-one can imagine
ANNEXE
July 7, 2020
Keith Nunes (Aotearoa/New Zealand) was nominated for Best Small Fictions 2019, the Pushcart Prize and has won the Flash Frontier Short Fiction Award. He’s had poetry, haiku, short fiction and visuals published around the globe.
