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"No Scrubs" • TLC (by Shaw Patton)


Singing the wrong lyrics on the big green transformer box waiting for the bus the box is humming we’re humming Don’t go, Jason Waterfalls the cool Power Ranger is still green soon to be white soon to replace Jason but Jason we still need your thick red neck… 


Tony waiting at the bus stop with us is a Batman fanatic who wears his jacket as a cape with only the hood on nah nah nah nah nah nah I wonder if he stayed a fan how happy he is to live in a world where comic book heroes are splattered across the big screen serialized streamed 


near the transformer box 

creeping juniper grows rough yet soft and around the base pill bugs rolly pollys or potato bugs (I’ve moved so many times I can’t recall what I originally called them) curl up tight in our palms 


Tony eats one for reasons unknown and it tries to climb up his esophagus he drinks water and takes bites of the sandwich from his packed lunch to stop it like the construction workers who are taught to throw their hammers, break the water's surface if they fall off the bridge 


one of the older girls pretends to close her eyes and predict where we are 

one of the older boys teaches us the gravestone to push in Zelda to find stairs

one of those ladies with beautiful voices will die in a car crash in Honduras



Shaw Patton is a Japanese-American who can barely speak Japanese. He's a Florida expat with his wife and daughter in Albany, New York. He has work or upcoming work in Cimarron Review, HAD, $ (Poetry is Currency), Eunoia Review, and Oroboro. Reluctantly still dealing with Elon’s Twitter (X?) @shawpwhat 

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