Scott Waters lives in Oakland, California with his wife and son.  He graduated with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.  Scott has published previously in Impspired, Main Street Rag, Better Than Starbucks, The Blue Nib, The Pacific Review, Loch Raven Review, Adelaide, A New Ulster, The Courtship of Winds, Scarlet Leaf Review, and many other journals.  Scott’s first chapbook, Arks, was published in 2021 by Selcouth Station, and his poem “I Could Be Anybody” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Real

Once the thought
crosses your mind

that a bot
may have written

this
poem

you begin to question 
whether you 

yourself 
are real.

My Old Royal

I miss my Royal typewriter, the way the keys
would often stick, ink on my hands,
unjamming their long slender necks,
five geese crowding for a soggy crust of bread.

I don’t remember getting rid of my old Royal,
only snapshots of before and after,
the slow yet sudden passing of an era —
one moment hibernating in my dorm room,

pounding the gristle of my honors thesis,
the next I’m tapping glowing letters
on a 3x5 device, thumbs aching, eyes sizzling,
the virtual index card of modern life.

Maybe I took my Royal to Goodwill,
the day I saw the writing on the wall—
or dropped it in the trash can,
or locked it in the dark museum of my mind.

If You Find Me

under the oak tree at the far, far
   edge of the subdivision,
buried in midnight loam
with the rusted bottle caps 
and broken Nehi bottles;

at the bottom of the chipped
   and mud-stained coffee cup
of the union leader tilting 
in his unstuffed leather chair
beside the cob-webbed window;

beneath the purple 
   bird’s nest hat
of the African-descended woman
humming in the front seat 
of the cross-town bus;

inside the black beak of the crow
   gliding under fog 
and over Sunday morning houses 
like a harbinger of nothing
but itself—

ask me what I’m doing there.

ask me for my name.