Pat Foran

Pat Foran can’t stop/won’t stop singing “Paper Roses” (Slim Whitman version) or that “Write on, brothers, write on! with a Paper Mate® Write Brothers pen” commercial. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review, MoonPark Review, LEON Literary Review and elsewhere. Website: http://neutralspaces.co/your_patforan/. Twitter: @pdforan.

SIMPLE ANSWERS TO ESSENCE QUESTIONS AT THE INTERNATIONAL PAPERWEIGHT FESTIVAL by Pat Foran

Long before the wildness of fire engulfed their town, and well after self-winding watches had become a thing, the townspeople thought of themselves as a simple people who enjoyed simple pleasures. They saw light in paper moons and love in the soft ridges of the infinite arrowing of the universal “recycling” logo. They believed in paper planes and in the notion of shared paper routes. They spent their evenings pressing paper roses between the pages of 1959 Buick Le Sabre brochures. The townspeople took particular pride in the International Paperweight Festival they hosted each summer in the paper mill parking…

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SING TO ME THE ONE ABOUT THE RIGHTEOUS EMBRACE OF THE INEFFABLE by Pat Foran

Something My name is Phineas and if I can get the pose right, a photograph of me will appear in the 1979-80 Ridgid Tools Two-Year wall calendar.  In a two-piece and six-inch heels, I am holding a No. 930 1/2-inch D-Handle Reversing Drill like it’s a semi-automatic weapon.  “I need a little more…something, Phineas,” the photographer said. “A little more serendipity, a little more world-weariness. Show me a righteous embrace of the ineffable. And a little more gam.” *** Level We were fixing up a place that needed fixing up. We were going to live there. Her parents were helping,…

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