these fresh passages

"These Fresh Passages," August 13, 2022 (#225)

title from The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems by Michael Ondaatje (1970)

Endgame by Samuel Beckett (1957)

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)

The End by Salvatore Scibona (2008)

The Game (1997)

These Fresh Passages

To think perhaps it won't all have been for nothing!

I expect that it is the last time I'll need to speak to

a miniature sickle for cutting twine to a steel ring that

CLINKS his fork against a glass, motioning...

I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I'd take him

to authorize us to share his citizen's access. To adopt

the surface, the frigid air whiffled into the vents, through

the opulent lobby to the desk. The grinning HOTEL MANAGER

was tearing up the dead pines and sweeping them... away,

playing along with them. But I'm not playing games with

tracing the path of a zigzagging object that

had to keep you distracted while they broke

a bloodstained bit of blue bordered in crescent.

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