He has never seen a duck walk into a bar. He wonders if that is one reason why he is incapable of telling a joke. He does like to laugh at jokes, at least some, but he cannot tell one. He has tried. He has elicited groans and requests that he not continue. He has never gotten a laugh, save when he tripped over a cord when telling a joke. He knows the laugh was because of his clumsiness. He doesn’t consider physical humor funny, at least when it happens to him. She tells him timing is everything in humor. He asks her what time it is. She doesn’t laugh.

Louis Faber

is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in The Alchemy Spoon (UK); Arena (Australia); Atlanta Review; Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review; Cantos; Cold Mountain Review; Defenestration Mag; Dreich Magazine (Scotland); Erothanatos (India); Eureka Literary Magazine; European Judaism; Glimpse Poetry Magazine (Toronto); The MacGuffin; Meniscus (Australia); Midnight Mind Magazine; Midstream; New Feathers Anthology; Pearl (Long Beach); Prosetrics (Netherlands); Rattle; South Carolina Review; and The Worcester Review, among many others. His work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Find him online at:
https://anoldwriter.com and https://theoldpoet.substack.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Absolution, poem by Faber in unleash lit (21 October 2025)

⚡ Laryngitis, prose poem in Dog Throat Journal (26 August 2025)

⚡ Heaven Must Wait in Dipity Lit Mag (4 February 2023)

⚡ How to get your poems published by Louis Faber, on Imaginative Storm (13 September 2025)