[UNTITLED]

                A clown comes to the door collecting for some clown charity.  I lie that I had just given to some other clown who came to the door last week, then slam the door before he can fire that evil squirting flower in my face.  Too late: now he’s wedged his giant shoe in the door frame.  He pushes his way inside, going on and on about how clowns are more at risk for depression and suicide than almost any other marginalized community, and that just a small donation can go a long way.  I’m about to slip him a twenty just to get him to go away, when he points to the fruiting apple tree in my backyard through the kitchen sliders.  It turns out his grandfather, Bobo Senior, had had one just like it in his own yard that he would love to climb when he was still a mime.  Then he asks if we might continue our conversation in its shade.  I begrudgingly agree, but the instant I open the sliders he shimmies up into the boughs and starts pelting me with apples, as if in this way to wear me down into opening up my wallet. 

Justin Hollis has an MFA from Hofstra University and currently teaches language and literature at Palm Beach State College.  His work has appeared previously in Action, Spectacle, Pioneer Town, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, GAS: Poetry, Art and Music, ANTAE, Midcult*, and The Chiron Review, amongst others.  His debut collection, Ferrying the Stars, is published by Half Inch Press.