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  Table of contents Issue Twenty-three TAPE-RECORDER MAN
by CHAD COLLINS		 Home  
   
 

Two sisters
1975
Wheaton Plaza
Lunch and Easter Decorations
Home by 4:00 PM

A slice of pizza at the Orange Bowl
Slithery, viscous, and delicious

Children near the man in the brown suit
50, maybe, like a father, or 60, like a grandfather

An index card, and questions
hastily scribbled in black marker
like the downcast secretary with no one waiting at home

A tape-recorder inside a black briefcase that doesn’t match the suit
Children near the man in the suit, answering questions

Charley says, “Don’t talk to strangers”
An apple for the boy and a fish for Charley

They renounce the precocious cat
They answer the man in the brown suit’s questions

He goes to the Orange Bowl for a soda
It’s served in a cup, Jazz design, no lid

Two sisters
Not home by 4:00 PM

   
   

 

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Chad Collins is an undergraduate student at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. His prose has been published in Connections, the undergraduate journal at The College of Southern Maryland, The Flagler Review, and Inwood Indiana Press. In addition, his editorials and essays have been featured in Bloody Disgusting and The Maryland Independent. He works in the English Department in dedicated mode with Professor St. Clair, the head of Flagler College’s Creative Writing Department.



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