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Tchotchkes


by Gary Hardaway


In Memoriam

It was a bad year for losses-
But aren't they all?


Dessert

The fortune cookie tells me
”Use your charm and personality
to obtain your wishes.” It seems
the cookie doesn't know me well.


Recalibration

Artists, like scientists,
must trust their instruments
despite uncertainty's
nagging bray.


Kill

Hit a plane? You hit a plane.
The enemy's plane, a machine
designed to kill you.
It's not a pilot, with a family, dead.
It's a plane. The enemy's plane.


Mementos

Each little token is the world
as you knew it at each time and place

before the tastes and refinements
of a larger world taught you how

to be ashamed of what
you remembered where.
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