20170822

Howie Good


The Worst

Last year, I went a month without sleeping. I’d go home all covered in flour. You could stick me in the oven and bake me like a cake. What's most challenging is seeing the same story repeated over and over again. We’re all ’80s kids. They scheme all the time to con us. It shouldn’t have happened like this. It shouldn’t have happened at all. I couldn’t tell you how long we were waiting for everybody else to get in place. The fact is nobody knows. We’re not inventing anything, we’re just stealing really well. This is the eye from a woman who participated in the project.

*

We’re trained for Armageddon. We’re trained for the worst. And yet I can barely make it day to day. This whole place used to be green with a lot of pasture. I used to see seagulls everywhere. Today there are none. We know we will have to move. Will we live nearby or be scattered? Will we even be allowed on the lake if it’s all lined with offices? So far all we’ve seen are dead bodies. It's heartbreaking. But we have no option. Salvador Dali is forever.

*

My sister came off the porch and went to the side of our neighbor's house with a stick, thinking a strange dog was there. I toyed with various things on the submarine. My first instinct was, what the hell? Did a rock hit it or something? I didn’t expect this at all. We’re not meteorologists or God. When we dig, we find enemies. We have lots of statues of 19th-century figures, but we never had such a big crowd for a funeral. And that’s the mark of progress, isn’t it?



Howie Good is the author of The Loser’s Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize for Poetry from Thoughtcrime Press. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.
 
 
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1 Comments:

Blogger Karen G-M said...

This one clatters around in my head. Wow.

3:34 PM  

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