Make Your Job More Joyful
[word-banked from Marie Kondo’s Joy at Work “Contents,” pages vii-x]
Is your workplace
a festival of distractions?
When others disrupt your work,
make a mess, hold you back,
you can create an environment
where you can focus.
Tidy up. The basic rule is
don’t be sentimental.
Gather your coworkers,
make a pile, and discard,
all in one go. Fast.
Change your life: take over
your workplace. You deserve it.
Start Living Life Uninhibited
Millions of women
like you
feel barely noticeable,
invisible. Stress
and lurking worries
neutralize
your confidence.
But you can celebrate
the beauty of
your surprisingly thin gumline
by laughing.
Don’t sacrifice your power,
embrace self-determination.
You’ll feel revolutionary.
Poet’s Note: My recent chain drugstore receipt culminated in coupons for three items I have never purchased or used: a gum-detoxifying toothpaste, a full body deodorant, and adult incontinence pads. This poem (title included) is word-banked from text found on the online product pages for the items featured in those coupons. I thought corporate America owed older women a more empowering vision of aging.
The Dream, Over
I have been unable to find a poem
made from a drunken clown’s breath.
Each line of this micro-cento (title included) is sourced from a different poem in Richard Brautigan’s 1976 collection, Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork. Source poems, in order: “You Will Have Unreal Recollections of Me”; “The Amelia Earhart Pancake”; “Death Like a Needle.”
Without You
a freshly-dug grave
just worms out there
…you are late.
Each line in this micro-cento (title included) is sourced from a different poem in Richard Brautigan’s 1976 collection, Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork. Punctuation is preserved from the original text. In order, source poems are: “Maxine”; “Curiously Young Like a Freshly-Dug Grave”; “Punitive Ghosts Like Steam-Driven Tennis Courts”; “3 / A Telescope, A Planetarium, A Firmament of Crows.”
Tracy Royce’s writing appears in 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, The Ekphrastic Review, ONE ART, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize, and her story, “Sibling Rivalry,” was selected for Best Microfiction (2026). She lives in Southern California, where she hikes and obsesses over Richard Widmark movies. Her current favorite is Night and the City, in which Widmark careens through the streets of London, trying to outrun Herbert Lom, Mike Mazurki, and his own comeuppance. You can find Tracy on Bluesky.
