Stranger on the Street

by Anna Teresa Slater

Published in the author’s poetry collection, A Singular, Spectacular Chore (2020), from Kasingkasing Press. Click the arrow (>) to learn more about this piece

I want

the old man on the unicycle to listen to my prayers. Maybe―

on his way home, his left arm a wand scribbling gravity spells in the air, his right swinging a blue plastic bag, circling like a gentle carousel, leafy greens erupting from above―he has got

the ripped out pages from the back of the book. Maybe he’s

the one who holds the instructions to a dragon-slayer life. His shirt glittering

with holes, shorts cut off above his sunshine knees, slippers with weary soles scrolled over pedals, and his spine so upright one could measure pyramids with it. I wish

the old man on the unicycle would teach me how to strip one’s second-by-second existence down to the essence of a singular, spectacular chore, or

how to fetch vegetables

from the corner store

without falling over.

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Anna Teresa Slater is a teacher from Iloilo, Philippines. She has a diploma in AB Philosophy from De La Salle University and completed her MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Her work is published in Channel Lit Mag, Ghost City Review, Palette Poetry, Harana Poetry, Song of Eretz Poetry Review, and more, as well as in anthologies by Kasingkasing Press and Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her first poetry collection, A Singular, Spectacular Chore (Kasingkasing Press), was released as an e-book in 2020 and in paperback in 2022. The collection was in the Readers’ Choice Awards’ top 10 poetry books for 2019–2021.

Website: annateresapoetry.com

Did you enjoy this piece? If you’d like to order the author’s book, A Singular, Spectacular Chore, you may contact her at annatcslater@gmail.com.