Dodo Eraser

Author: Travis Shosa

  • Rewatching One of My Favorite Shows Sober, I Don’t Recognize Some of These Characters 

    Sobriety: Day 223 I’ve heard there are two types of fun,though I haven’t independently verified this.Type One you have in the moment:like on a roller coaster, butthat’s an extreme example. More likeenjoying time in the company of friends,consciously, while it’s happening.Presence required in more ways than one.But my performance of this has alwaysbeen stilted. It’s…

  • My phone is better at giving 100% of itself than I am

    I find it inspirational when my phone dies because Idon’t think I’ve ever given anything 100%, personally.Even when I ran a 4:40 mile in high school, I bet I wasonly at ~96% of my max possible exertion. I’d probablyneed to be chased by a ravenous lion or tiger to hit 100%. Even this poem just…

  • Desperate Times Called

    Before I was interrupted, I was telling you about provincial politics: our Premier—that’s like the Governor, for the Americans in the audience tonight—just bought a private jet for thirty million dollars. Which, if you ask me, is fine as long as you work for it, because in this country we reward merit like any other…

  • Two Poems by Chris Dolan

    Grandma Watched The first few times I enteredthe coop through the chute.Grandma tried to keep meout by talking up the rooster,whom I watched killone of the spring kittens. I was quite a bit biggerthan the kitten and had bootswith rubber up to my knees,which must be impenetrable to chicken feet. This was a tactical error. The…

  • Door Number Three

    We fuck in my father’s Toyota parked in a church parking lot as big fluffy snowflakes cake over the windshield. She’s the type I never find myself with. Far wilder than me with ideas that I gloss over then find myself enamored with. Like the time we throw two hundred bucks away playing gypsy games…

  • Rufus Chevalier Takes Charge

    Rufus Chevalier dreamed he had an absolutely fantastic idea, one with the potential to make him a wealthy man with a yacht and a butler; but when he awoke, he couldn’t manage to remember what it had been. Talk about a waste! Usually, he just dreamed that he was a passenger on an airplane under…

  • Acceptance Speech

    [To be given at first possible opportunity—] Good evening. You’re all idiots who know nothing about choosing award winners. I cannot fathom the stupidity required to select my work for this insignificant honor or what pitiful competition it supposedly bested. You ghouls incompetently crowned me champion of an entirely subjective popularity contest with no bearing…

  • String Axiom

    Action! As film rolls–frames circle frames,pan in–center the camera on me. We open on: butterfly effects of created coincidences. Paradoxical notions formed of this fragmentedmind. On display, for all to see, a concert of thought strings plucked–as I slip my limbs into delicate marionette threads. this damnable, elongated performance,is one of survival. I am hoisted as my feet…

  • Out-of-work Actors

    They wait tables, they groom dogs, they walk dogs, they paint dogs, they house sit, they are Merry Maids, they are sex workers, they are companions to old folks with moderate mobility issues, they are restaurant greeters, they sell seasonal opera tickets, they are babysitters, they are telephone fortune tellers, they are car wash coupon…

  • Dodo Eraser Issue #3

    Hello! It’s been a very hectic month or so over at Dodo Eraser and your humble editor has been flying by the seat of their pants. We held our first ever in-person reading in Baltimore around AWP at the Ottobar, and tonight, per usual, we have a virtual reading, this time featuring Tommy Wyatt Blake,…