Howie Good

Red Emma

Emma Goldman wasn’t actually a Red. The press branded her that. She dressed like a middle-class matron in ankle-length skirts and a pince-nez, and had a house in New Jersey. “We’ll meet again,” said Nietzsche, “but on one condition – we get divorced.” In her speeches she called for free love and anarchism. Undercover cops infiltrated the audience. It’s why certain words to this day have the bitter aftertaste they do.

The Dark

The woman in camel pants and a red top was leaving. Only the dead were prepared to stay. There was a lag between seeing their lips move and hearing their scratchy voices. I tried not to listen. What should I call the situation? A psychotic break? A Lifetime Channel movie? I can’t think of it now without feeling sadness and shame. You can stare into the dark for just so long before the dark begins staring back.

Self-Medicating in America

I fantasize about a knob I could turn that would lower the volume of my pain. It's a stabbing pain in my left side, the area radiated after surgery. Cannabis-infused gummies help somewhat. They come in strawberry, mango, and peach flavors, but they all taste the same – awful. Relief can last two to three hours. Birds chirp. Insects chirrup. The masses remain inert. And Melania Trump knows exactly who she’s married to.

Funeral Music

I felt the tightness in my chest that usually precedes a full-blown panic attack. But that’s me, always anticipating something that might never happen or that perhaps already has. “Hitler should come back and gas you!” people on the street yelled and first thing in the morning, too. I have that kind of face. Every day there’s a funeral – actually, several. I look into the open casket and immediately regret it. My brother, awaiting his turn in line, blubbers. We’re all neighbors in a country where no one lives.

Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime Blues

Death, dressed all in black to intimidate, removed the cigarette from his mouth and stepped back to assess his work. A man flopped about on the pavement, gasping. It was the summer I was 12. My first beer ever tasted like diarrhea, the breath of cancer. The times were strange. Flowers ached to open and the eyeholes bled.

Precious Gems

I asked the bored-looking security guard dawdling inside the main door which way to go. He pointed with his chin. I walked to the right. Every child was a precious gem, a big head on a starved body. There were so many that I just kept walking. The farther I went, the fainter the memory of the suffering in their eyes became. Soon I could smell the ocean. I felt strangely emotional. And then death loomed up through the rain, like the whaling museum we talked about but never visited.

Howie Good is the author of The Dark, a poetry collection forthcoming from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.