Stories

By Larry Blumen

I never knew my father. Apparently my mother never knew him either. First he died in Vietnam. Then he disappeared in San Francisco. Then he killed a man in Tennessee and got the chair. He had different names at different times, none of them mine. These are the stories my mother told me before I was old enough to think. When I was old enough, I went looking for my father. I got a DNA test, thinking it would show his whereabouts. It didn’t. Then I searched the Wall in Washington for all his names. They weren’t there. Then, in Tennessee, I met a girl—she had her way with me. Before I went to sleep, she told me stories of her life. When I woke up, she was gone.

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don’t make me

By Larry Blumen

I’m not a comedian
don’t make me
make you laugh
although I could if
I weren’t sitting down

My aim is more
insidious—
to make you smile
without rippling the
muscles of your face
at all—
a conjurer’s trick
performed with
my sleeves rolled up
to my ankles

the furrows of your
unseen brain
will shiver
with metallic tastes

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Schrödinger’s Room

By Larry Blumen

The room is dark. The only light is coming from the screen of a computer on a desk in the corner diagonally opposite the door. It’s 3 AM. You don’t know yet whether the room is somebody’s bedroom or an office in a tall building. I haven’t told you. And I haven’t told you if there is anybody in the room right now, or nobody. If there’s nobody there, I’m sure you would agree it’s not much of a story. So I’ll tell you—there’s someone in the room. But you don’t know if that person is alive or dead. If the person is alive, there may not be a story here at all—just somebody working late, or an insomniac in his bedroom making contact with other bedrooms in the the night. I guess it might make a difference if the person is a woman rather than a man—either way, it could be boring or wildly exciting. Of course, if the person is dead, it could still be a boring, routine death. A lot might depend on where the room is. And whether or not there is anyone else in the room with the person. There are so many things I haven’t told you.

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