Each new issue of Prune Juice features a best-of-issue senryu chosen by one of the co-editors.  

proxy war chills at Netflix

     Tazeen Fatma, India

When we first came up with the idea of introducing a “Best of Issue” award for individual senryu, Antoinette, Peter, and I spoke at length about the qualities we felt constituted a truly great senryu. Ultimately, we settled upon five key criteria: sound, freshness, style, resonance, and, when applicable, humour (of course, not all senryu have to be funny, but we very much enjoy when they are). It’s not necessary for a piece to be strong in all of these areas – and, in fact, some poems are so strong in one respect that the other criteria become an afterthought – but we noticed that the senryu we most admired featured some attention to detail with all of these. It was with this rubric that we assessed the submissions for Issue 39, and it was with this rubric that I picked our first winner. 

I should note that the submissions we received for our maiden issue as an editorial team were excellent, which made selecting just one senryu for this award an agonizing task. Special consideration went into many poems, including Jerome Berglund’s topical and well-crafted “masculinity” and Giorgio Bacchi’s hilarious and slightly perverse “new government” – both of which could have easily been selected. However, it was the strength of “proxy war” in all of the aforementioned areas that won out in the end.

At first glance, the poem might appear to be something of a bewildering “word salad.” But after multiple readings, the real skill behind the words starts to shine through. The use of cacophony complements the gravity and immediacy of the “proxy war” subject matter (need I even mention the blue-and-yellow elephant in the room?) The clever inversion of the phrase “Netflix and chill” (usually meant to refer to casual sex), instead produces an effect of uncomfortability or distress. The monoku formatting allows the reader to cluster the words at their own liberty and still arrive at the primary meaning. The central juxtaposition creates ample opportunities for re-readings. (I thought of, for example, macro sociopolitical issues and Ciceronian notions of “bread and circuses” in one reading, and was then drawn to the limited domestic scope and the commentary on streaming culture in the next.) And while this senryu might be more unsettling than it is funny, the truly ironic among us might find something darkly comedic in its larger implications about our current societal struggles and their growing inescapability. 

With all this in mind, it was clear to me that Fatma had written something exceptional, and, as a result, I’m thrilled to announce her as the winner of Prune Juice’s inaugural “Best of Issue” award! 

Aaron Barry, Co-Editor
May, 2023

a breakthrough
during the climax—
plan b

the aesthetics
of roadside murals
class divide

Aksheeya, India


old pond
the only kind of orgy
I’ve ever seen

Vidhi Ashar, India


h(AI)ku

depression pills for craters on the moon

Marilyn Ashbaugh, USA


amarbel blooming—
dad asks me
for the umpteenth loan

the huge scrotum
of a golden hamster—
new government

Giorgio Bacchi, Italy


lift door opening
the nanosecond
of eye contact

graduation day
a mother’s hat
at a jaunty angle

Ingrid Baluchi, North Macedonia


river swallowing the ten-faced night

Rowan Beckett, USA


morning writing
at the coffee shop
the smell of synonyms

cold front
I end up using
an antonym

Brad Bennett, USA


in Ukraine
another volley of missiles
adjusting the contrast

David A. Berger, USA


masculinity
parts per
million

Jerome Berglund, USA


his old olds
the smell of gas
when it was cheap

art opening
what we see
what we miss

Elizabeth Black, USA


clear night
the death jingle
of a video game

car sputtering
the irrelevance
of the moon

Shawn Blair, USA


just a pig
living in the year
of the rabbit

Ed Bremson, USA


waiting for confession
I notice
The Virgin’s thigh

Marc Brimble, Spain


endangered species
the carousel rider
almost a teenager

Randy Brooks, USA


bugs! he goes pesticidal

Susan Burch, USA


he reads the reviews
but never the books
blind date

Alanna C. Burke, USA


ginger tea
she prefers
abortion this time too

Ram Chandran, India


sunrise between high-rises ancestral wisdom

spring equinox
half-thinking to water
my plants

Hemapriya Chellappan, India


driving wind
a shopping bag explores
my world

Thomas Chockley, USA


play date hiding in a see-through bin

Bill Cooper, USA


v-formation
the purple side
of my brain

Sue Courtney, New Zealand


blood moon
siblings divide
the hospital bill

forever you and AI

Alvin B. Cruz, Philippines


clear skies
I bring along
my own clouds

Dan Curtis, Canada


neighbour’s funeral
my wife cries more
than the widow

Tracy Davidson, UK


fire drill
his false teeth
first

back porch
grandma’s story reduced
to pronouns and verbs

Pat Davis, USA


insomnia—
my daughter and I compare
cannabis products

elehna de sousa, Canada


fretting
before and after
Rachmaninoff

Julie Emerson, Canada


taking the long extraterrestrial view

Robert Epstein, USA


this is the life hey mayfly

Keith Evetts, UK


infinite stars
  indefinite
          i

David Kāwika Eyre, USA


economy class
for 10 hours
pretzelized

Susan Farner, USA


whipped cream—
turning an anathema
into blessing

my struggles with routine word ladder

Tazeen Fatma, India


The Big Dipper brothers compare the effects of Flomax

Bruce H. Feingold, USA


algorithm
selling me dog food
. . . new emptiness

B.A. France, USA


Wordle
I start with
C-H-E-A-T

fairy tales
mother takes the edge
off the wolf

Terri French, USA


work trip
the loneliness of
the neighborhood bar

Ben Gaa, USA


bed of straw man fallacy

Michael J. Galko, USA


out of the closet
my transformation
    to spring shirts

Patrick Gallagher, USA


string theory
slipping a loop
and hopping aboard

shopping list
lottery ticket
a tin of beans

Mark Gilbert, UK

stretching
the truth
 relaxed fit 

my drive to work
next exit
Mars

LeRoy Gorman, Canada


before baby’s first breath the doctor’s callused hands

John S Green, USA


community garden
this year
more sunflowers

Johnnie Johnson Hafernik, USA


discarded laundry
the life-changing magic
of giving up

Mihan Han, Canada


airing secrets
deciphering our code
in the wet patch

Patricia Hawkhead, UK


the rooster crows his complicated coffee order

Kerry J Heckman, USA


first dry day
the sidewalk chalked
for hopscotch

Frank Higgins, USA


morning shower
I concuss myself
on the safety bar

Ruth Holzer, USA


outback highway
a thousand miles
of fatality markers

Louise Hopewell, Australia


empty nesters
we give our robot vacuum
a name

Lee Hudspeth, USA


ice storm
neighborisms
brewing

Jonathan Humphrey, USA


annual coup overthrowing the sock drawer

Peter Jastermsky, USA


grief season
i put the shell
back where it was

Amoolya Kamalnath, India


falling in love . . .
the softened edges
of his consonants

Julie Bloss Kelsey, USA


mental health workshop
again I cancel
my day off

Ian Kenney, Canada


hospice invoice:
date of arrival
date of departure

Ellen Kom, Canada


his reply
shorter than my question
creeping haze

Nadejda Kostadinova, Bulgaria


March Madness
even grandma checks
the DraftKings line

Douglas J. Lanzo, USA


unresponsive
the companion animal’s
first big test

Michael Henry Lee, USA


 high school yearbook
            silence
on the dead girl’s page

(b)older

Barrie Levine, USA


hunger moon
last lights go off
in the food court

Angela Leuck, Canada   


lunch with the family
just the sound
of forks

Antonietta Losito, Italy


another classmate
I can’t remember
in the obits
all the news fit to print
straight to the recycle bin

Bob Lucky, Portugal


All Hallows Eve—
one more Wednesday
in the nightclub line

Roman Lyakhovetsky, Israel


game night
our daughter
takes over the world

Hannah Mahoney, USA

to my plate

the long journey

steelhead

Annette Makino, USA


living a life
of anonymity
monk’s hood lichen

Sharon Martina, USA


news of war
in the crack of the wall
this anonymous flower

Françoise Maurice, France


when she says Kerouac unidentified butterflies

Tanya McDonald, USA


barbie’s dreamhouse youths knock at the door

Sarah E. Metzler, USA


anthropocene the home I no longer recognize

Akhila Mohan CG, India


mermaid poison
my grandson
writes noir

Wilda Morris, USA


senior wellness check
another inch lost
but to where

Laurie D. Morrissey, USA


campaign promises
a broken record
for funds raised

Spyros Mylonas, USA


Sunday morning
grandmother brushes
her one tooth

Nika, Canada


transpacific storms dry tongues the other side

Subir Ningthouja, India


a gale blowing;
the glossy brochure
full of headstones

Sean O’Connor, Ireland


the stale smokiness of a stranger
library book

Debbie Olson, USA


exp: ides / Mar

Roland Packer, Canada


ambulance siren the beggar bows his head

Pravat Kumar Padhy, India


sundown
a village where everyone
wears my face

Stephanie Palombo, USA


he said she said the shit on the bed

Christopher Patchel, USA


gradatim
building
      a
  house
  within
    me


jingkieng jri

I connect
disconnect
& re-connect

Deepa Patil, India


snowblowers the men with their biggest

Marianne Paul, Canada


crazy quilt
scraps of my past
take on new colours

Jacquie Pearce, Canada


coming apart
at the seams – – –
fast fashion

petro c.k., USA


how cold
the meat I have to cook
for dinner

Kamil Plich, Germany


waning moron . . .
half-asleep I misread
the poem’s first line

Thomas Powell, Ireland


a high five
left hanging
situationship

under the influence superior mirage

Ganesh R., India


editor friend
workshopping a poem
she later rejects

Bryan Rickert, USA


no will inside the doctor’s empty can’t

the tales you tell unlocked by face

rs, USA


post-election dinner
a heap of curry leaves
on the trash plate

Srinivasa Rao Sambangi, India


rush hour
that feeling the other line
moves faster

Olivier Schopfer, Switzerland


his habit snorting another line of credit

Julie Schwerin, USA


turning teen to bulimia nervosa

fatty (acid) body shamed the nth time

her worthiness under the scalpel

Teji Sethi, India


milk and pill—
at least some things
work together

Richa Sharma, India


too shy
to make friends
a potted peony

Neena Singh, India


tall poppies
the C-Suite announces
more layoffs

Joshua St. Claire, USA


private room
mother’s smile safe
in a glass of water

Stephenie Story, USA


pastel skies . . .
a lifeless
receiving blanket

Jan Stretch, Canada


silent spring
the drip drip drip
of her taxotere

my religion of glottal stops om

Raghav Prashant Sundar, India

cellblock lighting for beginning readers

a neo-Boolean afraid to change lanes

Patrick Sweeney, Japan


first date
a day lost exploring
my pockets

Herb Tate, UK


in a world
of reality TV
reality

Angela Terry, USA


ski lift conversation passing ravens

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco, USA


one-minute phone call
from the favorite son
cicada shell

Elisa Theriana, Indonesia


magenta sky
putting a smile on
bruises

C. X. Turner, United Kingdom


feng shui
I rearrange the people
in my life

Prashanth V, India


parallel universe
my garage band
still rehearsing

Jeffrey Walthall, USA


insisting
he’s not being bullied
the black-eyed boy

Michael Dylan Welch, USA


balletic his tongue ballistic

crayon recycling so many melted hearts

Genevieve Wynand, Canada 

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new year’s eve
my best intentions circle
the drain

Shelley Aikman, USA

the colour
of my recent memory––
chinar tree

dry leaves
the versions of myself
I leave behind

Vidhi Ashar, Bangalore, India

campsite clothesline
a teen girl connects
the holes in her dupatta

Hifsa Ashraf, Rawalpindi, Pakistan

their view
on contentious statues
city pigeons

dying town
the bright lights
of casinos

Ingrid Baluchi, Ohrid, North Macedonia

graveside blooms
she did have a way
with things

faded rainbow––
the uncertainty
of your love

Mona Bedi, Delhi, India

in the waiting room––
trying to become the white moth
in a field of clover

Deborah A. Bennett, USA

a new play
about racism
no intermission

sundowning
Mom calls it
moonlighting

goldfinch flight––
maybe my path
is too straight

Brad Bennett, USA

a child still
again
white lilies

Bisshie, Zürich, Switzerland

remedial history––
learning which battles
are mine

Julie Bloss Kelsey, Maryland, USA

heavy grey clouds
where two oceans meet––
carrying your child

René Bohnen, Mossel Bay, South Africa

heat lightning
the storm rages
inside her

Nancy Brady, USA

tightening
your guitar strings
the tension increases
how much longer
before you snap

Susan Burch, USA

third booster
the pharmacist and I
on a first-name basis

Marylyn Burridge, USA

dissonance
the pianist shares
with the neighborhood

Alanna C. Burke, USA

portrait photo
trying to look better
than i do

Sondra Byrnes, USA

flower tattoo
on her old scar
kintsugi

Christopher Calvin, Indonesia

Halley’s comet
the absence
of a father

petro c.k., USA

bone white
grandma’s vase
sold for a dollar

Erin Castaldi, USA

our garage
sheathed in moonlight
his first swastikas

Aidan Castle, USA

steamed cod
the sharpness of scallions
in mother’s scolding

miscarriage––
every hour
the cuckoo’s cry

ginkgo leaves the unexpected corollaries of middle age

Antoinette Cheung, Canada

imagining
what she isn’t saying
ley lines

Evan Coram, USA

secret wedding
she throws her bouquet
to the wind

a river
meandering down
to the sea
my yearning to be
more than a friend

suspended class
i continue listening
to the rain

Alvin B. Cruz, Philippines

sipping cocktails
the garbage on the beach
wasn’t in the brochure

Stephen C. Curro, USA

thoughts and prayers
if only they could raise
the dead

Dan Dolen, USA

night wind
I run in a desert
with wild dogs

in dreams
the pieces of my heart
blue sharks

Anna Maria Domburg-Sancristoforo, The Hague, Netherlands

happy hour
his marriage
on the rocks

press clippings
my accolades
yellowing

Johnette Downing, USA

laughter lines
i add one more
to my drawing

Christine Eales, United Kingdom

blowing dust
off an old book
the smell of time

homeless
no change in her cup
or circumstance

Eavonka Ettinger, USA

she plans
her own spectacular fall––
hell flower

she sleeps
to talk to her dead––
narcolepsy

moving through
the rain shadow
she becomes a rainbow

Adele Evershed

funeral parlour
the one time
I kiss my father

Keith Evetts, United Kingdom

third culture I never was

Tazeen Fatma, India

life goes on
my heart settles back
into rhythm

Bruce H. Feingold, USA

black dahlias
his love letter
in ALL CAPS

P. H. Fischer, Vancouver, Canada

extinction-level event . . .
I stir more sugar
into my coffee

sequoia tree rings
he stretches his arms
from the Aztecs to Hiroshima

Jay Friedenberg, USA

falling rain
when she speaks Spanish
all over me

Alex Fyffe, USA

all my children
grown up––
a storch flies past

family quilt––
patching her life
together again

Katja Fox, Cambridge, United Kingdom

rocking me
back into neutral
a park swing

Jenny Fraser, New Zealand

dusty corner
i, too, am coated
by this year

Ben Gaa, St. Louis, MO USA

silence
the moving lips
at prayer

history
seen with 2022 vision
a different story

Mike Gallagher, Ireland

hidden stitches
the lives my mother
never lived

Lisa Gerlits, USA

touching each wall
before the estate sale
mom’s path

Klimt
I tilt my head
to the right

Peggy Hale Bilbro, USA

divorce sale––
desk chairs in the driveway
back to back

small-town diner
customers cluster
on the sunny side

stranger
in a strange land
block party

Jennifer Hambrick, USA

hospital fare
almost
food

three sleeping pills
whenever
will morning come

Charles Harper, Japan

falling blossom
indigenous children
in unmarked graves

John Hawkhead, United Kingdom

perimenopause
the untouched gray
in her pigtails

Kerry J Heckman, Seattle, Washington, USA

havdalah––
lightning separates
day and night

Janet Ruth Heller, USA

returned vet
sleeping on the floor
of his old room

Frank Higgins, USA

wisteria
how easily she climbs
into another bed

in a picture in a locket
in a casket in the ground
she forces a smile

Jonathan Humphrey, USA

louder and louder prayers the lord of diminishing returns

Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta, India

this love song
not written for me . . .
and yet

Deborah Karl-Brandt, Germany

changing my grandson’s diaper
I discover
the fountain of youth

Brian Kates, USA

a hologram of life yet to be lived egg freezing

knit drop knit drop
the sound of dreams
beyond midnight

Arvinder Kaur, Chandigarh, India

morning routine
I follow their movements
with my chai tea

David J. Kelly, Dublin, Ireland

silver strands
in her hairbrush
another goodbye

Kimberly Kuchar, USA

at the funeral––
two ex-wives exchanging
memories

Natalia Kuznetsova, Russia

last day of August
letting the calendar
linger in summer

Kristen Lindquist, USA

she asks me
to trust her
Cheshire moon

Gregory Longenecker, USA

Sunday brunch
the line at the soup kitchen
two-blocks long

Bob Lucky, Portugal

wildfires raging I join a tweet storm

Hannah Mahoney, USA

morning fog––
her husband tries to explain
where he was last night

Andrew Markowski, USA

livestock tent
a knot in the rope
in my stomach

Sarah E. Metzler, USA

driveway chalk––
all the colors of
childhood

Laurie D. Morrissey, USA

Indian civil exam––
a jam packed train
of young men

rural polling booth––
a policeman sleeps
in the classroom

Daipayan Nair, Silchar, Assam, India

Google thinks
I’d like to remember––
hospice pics

Maurice Nevile, Australia

ultrasound
gender
yet to be . . .

Nika, Calgary, AB, Canada

how long
we’ve had democracy
leaf fall

David Oates, USA

school backpack
she carries the weight
of the world

Debbie Olson, USA

fading
into the sky
her last words

art docent––
hearing her words
change color

Victor Ortiz, USA

coastal rain
again I think
about drowning

John Pappas, Boston, MA, USA

high tea
Gods discuss men
fighting over them

crying kids
he leaves
because he can

Vandana Parashar, Panchkula, India

school uniforms
the individuality
of skirt lengths

vacation over
how quickly we return
to old patterns

Jacquie Pearce, Canada

mum’s drawer
a seashell from
my childhood’s shore

Alan Peat, United Kingdom

Mapparium––
you whisper my name
across the world

blind narcissus
the infinite reflection
of a victim complex

between virgin and whore the crucifixion of an orgasm

Pippa Phillips

yard sale
a box filled
with used flaws

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams, USA

shifting clouds my child’s pronouns

penny fountain
that same wish
since childhood

our inheritance
heirloom seeds
in an old tin can

Bryan Rickert, USA

trial break-up
the wind toys
with the snow

a helicopter throbs
across a clear sky
I delete his name

Cynthia Rowe, Sydney Australia

red sprites my pain ignites the upper atmosphere

rs, USA

agendas steeped
in polite conversations
afternoon tea

Jenn Ryan-Jauregui, USA

glacial lake
all the stories
i’ll never know

Barbara Sabol, USA

retired now . . .
what will I be
when I grow up

Bonnie J Scherer, USA

claddagh ring
i refuse the next
relationship

Richa Sharma, Ghaziabad, India

riding on a lawnmower
the thief steals
the quiet of dawn

Ryland Shengzhi Li, USA

the cities
I’ve lived in
live in me

Neena Singh, Chandigarh, India

night rain . . .
how every drop echoes
through a broken home

Srini, India

skeleton flower
sister and I excavate
our childhood

Stephenie Story, USA

news of her stroke . . .
I pray to a god
I don’t believe in

Nick T, United Kingdom

red lipstick smears
the little face
child bride

Elisa Theriana, Bandung, Indonesia

anniversary––
I get to hold
your photograph

C.X.Turner, United Kingdom

in a language I don’t know the subtitles of love

pollen grains––
my confession
in uppercase

Aishwarya Vedula, India

only two cars
follow the hearse
snow showers

Joseph P. Wechselberger, USA

retirement
my to do list
done

Robert Witmer, Tokyo, Japan

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Crimping the fringe

My fingers paused at the bottom of my ‘Indian clothes box’. The khadi scarf, soft with wear near caresses my hand. I bring white-going-on-blue fabric with the slim purple border, close to my face. Memories woven into the warp and weft of the coarse, yet smooth cotton threads sailed to me. I breathe deep. Is it sandalwood or is it my mind?
Achacha.
My grandfather, whose connection with the charkha is, even to this day, well known in the village, always wore a dash of the golden sandalwood paste on his forehead.
Even years after his passing, stories of his and my grandma’s sacrifices for Indian independence are fresh.

The time when they had to sell their only fan in the heat of summer to buy cotton bales. They taught villagers how to spin cotton into fine yarn on a charkha, and then hand craft into slightly coarse fabric. It was a step towards independence.
The time when they taught women to read and write in the light of oil lamps after the day’s work.
The time when despite police beatings, he stubbornly insisted on nonviolent protests.

A tiny smile. Another deep breath. The sandalwood fragrance has vanished.
I carefully double one edge of the tiny stole over another, along slightly yellowed fold lines. And tuck my memories away. Safe.

crack of thunder
an old oak
buckles

Sangita Kalarickal, USA

The Luthier

Thrown like a star in my vast sleep
I opened my eyes to take a peek
To find that I was by the sea
Gazing with tranquility

—Hurdy Gurdy Man, 1968 song by Donovan

summer’s end
a fiddler crab’s
last wave

The sky is growing darker. My best friend and I kick off our flip-flops and head toward the beach in hopes of absorbing some negative ions before the rain begins. An elderly man and woman approach from the shoreline. He is slight and hunched with sparse white hair and a wisp of a beard that catches the breeze. She stands straighter and carries her age well.

“Oh, I envy you girls,” she says as she approaches. We giggle at being called “girls” being well past middle-age. “Still able to walk barefoot and enjoy your youth.”
The man stands silently by her side for a moment. Smiling, he mumbles something I can’t quite understand before shuffling slowly toward their parked car. She lingers.

“My husband doesn’t say much anymore. . . He doesn’t remember things,” she says, gazing after him, “but, he’s happy.”

“What did he used to do?” asks my inquisitive friend.

“He made dulcimers and hurdy-gurdies. Do you know what those are?” We nod and she seems pleased. “I’m not bragging but people all the way in California used to order his instruments.” Her eyes begin to water. “He doesn’t even remember what they are any more.”

Quickly she shakes off her gloom the smile returning, “So, enjoy every breath you can, girls. It was lovely talking with you and I wish you both a good life.”

We wish her the same. She nods and follows after her husband who has almost reached the parking lot. We step into the sand as a soft rain begins to fall.

Terri L. French, USA

All the red-caped girls have gone

A wolf comes out of the woods and knocks on my door. He asks me to feed him with poems. Surprised, I say – why would a wolf eat poetry? In a sad voice he replies that so little of the forest is left that he has no choice but to alter his diet. Taking pity on him, I decide to feed him with some of my poems; the ones that were rejected by various editors. From that day on the wolf eats all my bad poems. Shortly thereafter I notice his weight gain.

silent dawn––
holes in the pockets
of forest

Ekphrastic haibun based on Aida Muluney’s ‘The Wolf You Feed Series’ (2018)

Alan Peat, United Kindgom & Réka Nyitrai, Romania

THE WITNESS

cracker jacks box
engagement ring
his red convertible

The three of us drive across the open border between El Paso and Juarez to find a justice of the peace we’ve heard will marry us. I’m sixteen.

My cat Blackie squirms in my arms as we climb the stairs to the judge’s office. “It’s okay,” I tell him and scratch his ears. The stairwell reeks of smoke and urine.

David hands the sour-faced judge $25.00. He pockets our money then asks, “Where are your witnesses?” Panicked, I turn to the judge’s wife. “Por favor, Señora, will you help us?”

“Si, mija, she responds. She takes Blackie and tells her husband, “The cat and I are the witnesses.” Blackie purrs as we say, “I do.”

Sharon Rhutasel-Jones, USA

Tongue Tied

Being a person who speaks only English, I have always admired people that speak two, three or even more languages. Understanding all the nuances and meanings that lie beneath the surface of a language that isn’t native to the speaker is a daunting task. That explains why a Japanese friend of mine was so embarrassed to find out there was such a big difference between a “butt dial” and a “booty call.”

forest bathing
a park ranger insists
I put clothes back on

Bryan Rickert, USA

a cloud blows into my knowing

hometown
the train moves away
from one future

—

nᵗʰ step

suddenly old
a square of silence
mending my gown

Richa Sharma, Ghaziabad, India

Poisson Rouge

Tuesday. Feeding time. My DC office buddy asks what I did over the long weekend.

“Paris,” I say, with a smile. “Rugby World Cup final.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Fun?”

“Awesome. Huge crowds. Great atmosphere.”

Eighty thousand inside the Stade de France. Two hundred thousand outside without tickets. The Champs-Élysées closed and filled with fans—a giant TV screen across the face of the Arc de Triomphe. A hundred thousand at the Eiffel Tower watching another live stream. The global TV audience for the tournament tops three billion.

“Crowds!” he says, tapping in more food. “Y’ain’t seen crowds ‘til you been to a Red Sox game.”

bloodshot eyes . . .
staring into the small world
of a goldfish

Lew Watts, Chicago, IL, USA

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