5/9/2017 0 Comments Poetry by Howie GoodTrial and Error The country is so huge that we don’t always understand it. It was like, “What the hell are they doing?” Then when the second shot went off, the three of us looked at each other. We didn’t know what was going to happen next. We decided to put down flowers and dog biscuits, and light a candle. * Now people can watch at 7 in the evening, if they want. I had never seen anything like this before. You have to be able eat in the dark while still paying attention to Hugh Jackman doing something crazy. The whole purpose is to make this last forever. In a hundred years, they could be doing car shows. But I kind of doubt it. * We are selling miracles. Someone ought to clap right there. See that field? Imagine there being a convoy there and fires in the distance. That’s where you get a chance to hear God speaking to you. This is who I am, he says. We can’t find his body, just a bloodied identity card. Door to the River There are only so many ways to build a harpoon gun. And then I thought, “Oh, I’m going to make the American flag with black hair.” And then I wanted to replace the stars with cotton. I cried on the phone several times talking to all the experts. The only other time I felt like this is when my father died. * Almost every day and night I have it. I wake up with it and sleep with it. I sometimes go crazy with the pain. Velocity is advancing everywhere while I fall farther and farther behind. What gives? The first thing I saw when I stepped off the bus was a woman. Her body was in pieces – ripples in the sand mimicking strands of hair, a dune tracing the curve of a hip. Evolutionarily, that’s a big deal. * If you look at 16 pictures of someone walking through a door, you think, “It really is a dance.” But now it’s all a bit of a blur. Everything should be designed so that that just never happens. I like to see things that maybe I’m not supposed to see – burning canvases floating on the river, big flames rising from the mountain. These are mostly places that don’t exist particularly anywhere. Or they could be everywhere. I love to go out early in the morning and see what’s bloomed overnight. Small Catastrophes I just had a feeling something like this would happen. We were running, we were crying, everyone was in shock. The amount of mud I was seeing, I never had seen before. And it was coming in waves. It was like Elvis coming back to play in Las Vegas. * Everything points to an act of terror. The tiny teacup meets the big black mass. And still we keep holding onto our spoons. A large banner draped across the front of the building says, Improve Every Shining Hour. The surrounding city looks suspiciously like Detroit, only with flaming riderless bicycles passing on the street. I can’t be in this place. The tourists are looking at things like they are from another world. “Ah,” they say, “interesting.” People don’t remember, and sometimes I think they don’t even understand where they are. * Do you want to die on the hill? I think it must be like a church. If you want to pray for the souls of all the people who are in the ground in this place, then come. Everything flows – voyeur voyager forager forester. You can hear the loons, the wind through the fir trees. I want to say, “Shh. Just sleep.” Bio: Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from ThoughtCrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.
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