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My Downfall is a Backroom Deal 🪞 Nathaniel Duggan

I want my sadness to dissipate

perfectly, like in a haiku,

hot rain on summer pavement,

etc,

but lately it’s more like atomic breath,

a mutagen lizard whose tail will not stop

regrowing, it has sixteen heads

all terminal with cancer.

So I take up hobbies, investing,

sabotaging US presidencies,

a stock market of shed skin:

doctors recommend losing

enough of yourself

to create an evil twin

on which to pin your crimes.

Now I’m learned in the supply and demand

of pedestrian hurts, and the sale

of my heart goes unregulated,

my downfall is a backroom deal,

my grievances vanish in the black night

of supermarket saving secrets.


📉 Nathaniel Duggan is a writer from Maine. His work has appeared previously in Hobart, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and Gay Death Trance, among others. He can be found on twitter @asdkfjasdlfjd.

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