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FOUR WAY REVIEW

Duy Đoàn (zwē dwän / zwee dwahn) is the author of We Play a Game, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. Duy’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Margins, and Poetry. He received an MFA in poetry from Boston University. His second collection, Zombie Vomit Mad Libs, is forthcoming from Alice James Books, November 2024. (Photo credit: Quân Trần)

MECHANICAL PENCIL by Duy Đoàn

Saturday, 17 August 2024 by Duy Doan

     for Amy

Do you capitalize phobias? Do you capitalize job titles when they’re attached to people? You capitalize the shorthand of a degree but not the degree spelled out. At my job we leave out the Oxford Comma, which sometimes gets us into trouble when it comes to clarity and always gets us into trouble when we leave the comma in there and forget to take it out, and our boss strikes through it. How do you spell the phobia with the gross holes. I’ve never Googled it because I don’t want to risk seeing images. A friend once warned me never to do so. I’ve tried every variation I can think of, in Microsoft Word, but they all come up wrong. Maybe Word doesn’t know that phobia. Or maybe it has that fear, too. Every variation I try has that line under it: red, squiggly, foreboding failure. Having a fear of birds is called ornithophobia. I know this because I Googled it. Do you capitalize phobias. 

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  • Published in Issue 30
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