Instructions on How to Assemble
Your Diagnostic Potato
After I inflated the car and watched it float over the
meadow, I heard a hissing in my left foot.
*
Then the streetlight buried its face in a blanket of moths.
*
Unable to find a spare bed, he spread out on a slice of
bread, pulling the leaf of wilted lettuce over him.
*
That minute has been following me for three days.
*
Once you've unloaded my voice into your speech program,
I can assure you that we'll become the best of friends.
*
Hair will tolerate nearly anything— except atonal weather.
*
He would often talk to his money. At the vending machine,
before he slid his dollar bill into the slot he'd say, Reggie want
to take a little ride?
*
For some unknown reason, Van Gogh never painted a
portrait of his kidney.
*
Even as we chatted, we could hear our teeth aging faster
than our words.
*
Should you find me slumped and shrinking, please plug my
body-unit into the nearest electric outlet.
*
I speak crooked not because I fear the straight razor, but for
all the mangled shapes left along the oral highway.
*
The instruction manual for assembling the diagnostic potato
said nothing about how to blind its eyes.
*
List my accomplishments now, before the night lays its eggs
in the seam on my coat.
____________________________________
John Bradley
Planetary Sway
Aphorisms for the
Everyday Emergency
Bottlecap Press 2026
Photo by Jana Brubaker
