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That Same Joke
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
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68 That Same Joke She washes hard, skin rising in the cold blue air of the kitchen. Ice glazes the branches black against a pallid sky. She is afraid of the night’s discontented borders, the mutters of her husband flailing asleep beside her. Her sister made her promise, so as the chicken sputters she sits & writes: Dear Donna, I am married but live alone. When I get quiet he tries the old line, the one that made me laugh. But I don’t know, sometimes I dream we fall off the end of the world & the stars close in clusters like I don’t know what. I’ve never been here before. I feel their glow & the way nothing shifts around us, as if we weren’t even there. She leaves with the letter, dazed by the sudden 69 sharpening of the sun, the way everything becomes clear yet distorted like light through an empty house. She looks back & sees the two of them, giant birds on stop-signs at the end of a street carved from memory or other precious stone— & he is telling that same joke, & he is still laughing. ...