A woman with blood on her hands is begging for help. The neighbors, attracted by her screams, just stand there and watch. Someone should hug her. Fuck it, I’m the patron saint of useless causes, the flamboyant bird of the desert.
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Birds didn’t arrive on this planet going “Fuck you” to everyone. Now, though, there’s hardly enough space for them between earth and sky. One bird teases another. Then the two commit suicide together.
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There was only grass. I couldn’t pass it through my throat. Yet I forced myself to swallow in front of the children so they would accept it as food. Ever dial F-U- C-K- Y-O- U and L-O- V-E- Y-O-U to see what would happen? A man knocked at the door and gave us his ear in a folded piece of paper, saying, “Take it, it will be useful.”
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Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely. Read more on his blog.
Art by David Delgado, “The Lights in Our Sandcastles are Always On”
Thursday, February 2nd 2017