Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsFall 2015  Vol. 14 No. 2
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an online journal of literature and the arts
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back JOHN ALLMAN

Thrift Shop

Towels, tongs, duvets, dog collars.
Look at this inversion table you can
lie back on, tilt yourself upside

down, forgotten blood rushing into
your thoughts. This book must have

been read in a waiting room, someone
the other side of swinging doors, a glaring
whiteness on her body as the masked MD

inserts another tube, while the plot
of the book thickens the way her life

is congealing. But here’s joy in a multi-
colored afghan, something to decorate
yourself with. And this etched glass shaped

like a huge finger, so it’s possible to drink
another person’s touch. The chair you sit in

reclines. Logs burn slowly in a fireplace,
heating a room hung with pictures of Gauguin’s
dusky women, a crackling flame almost the

sound of a cash register, the ping of coins.  end  


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