Bob Lucky

True Adventure

We would sneak off into the woods. We called it the woods, but it was more a wasteland of brush, dewberry brambles, and clusters of huisache, snakes and flies. We built a fort there and furnished it with comic books. Not far off, over the twisted remains of a barbed-wire fence, was a pond where we dangled fishing lines. The water was murky, and the fish we hoped to catch never took the bait, grasshoppers in the wrong place at the wrong time. One afternoon a man with a shotgun told us to lower our fishing poles and turn around slowly. The pond and every fish in it were his, and he gave us a choice: he could call the police or we could start running while he counted to ten. Sir, we said, please count slowly.

mosquito buzz the itch to tell a tall tale.

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About the Author

Bob Lucky is the author most recently of My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019) and the chapbook Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), which was a winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize in 2018. Lucky lives in Portugal, where he is working his way through the regional cheeses and wines.