Howie Good
THEATER OF REALITY
Many in the audience shift uneasily in their seats as the sole surviving member of the crew describes in hyper realistic detail the dropping of the A-bomb. “Spare us your life philosophy!” a voice finally yells at the stage. German oompah-pah music starts up somewhere near me. The floor, I now notice, is littered with discarded face masks. This might not be hell, but it definitely isn’t heaven. I smile at my own wry humor. And though the smoke chokes us, and the heat of the fire scorches our eyeballs, we stay to watch victims of police brutality in their last moments.
FLASH BANG BOOM
With the encouragement of family and friends, I adopted a retired bomb-sniffing dog. I called him “Flash” – after the flashing lights of a migraine, I would joke to anyone who asked. One day he discovered under the couch a severed doll’s head I didn’t even know I had. Next the piano stopped producing sounds when I sat down to play it. Then the tree outside my window appeared suspended like an astronaut in space. Now I often catch the dog lying on the couch studying me with cold, squinty eyes as if calculating exactly how much a person can bear.
OH, MERCY
I board the subway at 72nd Street carrying a metal briefcase like the one that contains secret nuclear launch codes. A busker playing guitar at the far end of the car is trying to make up in enthusiasm what he lacks in formal training. He apparently adheres to Lou Reed’s dictum: anything with more than three chords is jazz. The passengers ignore his musical pleas for attention. They nap. They text. They shed virus. When the train emerges for a moment above ground, the sky looks as if it’s been digitally erased. There are colors in nature that birds can see, but humans can’t.
WAR BABY
A war ends. But what changes? The magician, after all, doesn’t actually make the card disappear. On the birthing table, the ghastly queen, legs spread apart, mind full of pus, pushes and pants and pushes again. I’m not marching, but I can hear the chants of protesters. When I go out into the street, the sky that burns at dawn bleeds at dusk. I try to seem like just a regular guy. I call it box, snatch, snapper, muff, beaver, pussy, honey pot, cooch, slit, hoo-haw, and never what it is, the rushing buzzing of everything.
Many in the audience shift uneasily in their seats as the sole surviving member of the crew describes in hyper realistic detail the dropping of the A-bomb. “Spare us your life philosophy!” a voice finally yells at the stage. German oompah-pah music starts up somewhere near me. The floor, I now notice, is littered with discarded face masks. This might not be hell, but it definitely isn’t heaven. I smile at my own wry humor. And though the smoke chokes us, and the heat of the fire scorches our eyeballs, we stay to watch victims of police brutality in their last moments.
FLASH BANG BOOM
With the encouragement of family and friends, I adopted a retired bomb-sniffing dog. I called him “Flash” – after the flashing lights of a migraine, I would joke to anyone who asked. One day he discovered under the couch a severed doll’s head I didn’t even know I had. Next the piano stopped producing sounds when I sat down to play it. Then the tree outside my window appeared suspended like an astronaut in space. Now I often catch the dog lying on the couch studying me with cold, squinty eyes as if calculating exactly how much a person can bear.
OH, MERCY
I board the subway at 72nd Street carrying a metal briefcase like the one that contains secret nuclear launch codes. A busker playing guitar at the far end of the car is trying to make up in enthusiasm what he lacks in formal training. He apparently adheres to Lou Reed’s dictum: anything with more than three chords is jazz. The passengers ignore his musical pleas for attention. They nap. They text. They shed virus. When the train emerges for a moment above ground, the sky looks as if it’s been digitally erased. There are colors in nature that birds can see, but humans can’t.
WAR BABY
A war ends. But what changes? The magician, after all, doesn’t actually make the card disappear. On the birthing table, the ghastly queen, legs spread apart, mind full of pus, pushes and pants and pushes again. I’m not marching, but I can hear the chants of protesters. When I go out into the street, the sky that burns at dawn bleeds at dusk. I try to seem like just a regular guy. I call it box, snatch, snapper, muff, beaver, pussy, honey pot, cooch, slit, hoo-haw, and never what it is, the rushing buzzing of everything.
© Copyright Howie Good 2020
Howie Good is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, a poetry collection forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
