Angels and Crows
I
was eight, maybe nine, when my little cousin stuck out her foot and tripped me,
and my father, in a red rage because I had chipped a tooth, whacked me across
the face. Forty years later, my cousin would be found dead on the bathroom floor
from a drug overdose. If there were actually angels, would they fly in a
V-formation like geese, you think? Someone was just telling me that crows can
hold a grudge for a year or longer against a person who has mistreated them.
When I walk, wherever I walk, my shadow walks ahead of me.
Author Bio
I
could advertise the network of scars I bear from a neurotic upbringing, or say
I live mostly in my head, or even joke that I am a noted writer of blurbs for
other people’s poetry books, and I could do it, just as required by your
submission guidelines, in “50 words or less,” but it wouldn’t be nearly the
whole truth, more like an article of clothing snuffled by a search dog to learn
the scent of the person who has gone missing.
Blood Ceremonies
A
phone ringing in my dream wakes me. I recite like a prayer the plain honest
names of the streetwalkers whose throats were cut and bodies mutilated in the
night fog by Jack the Ripper: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth
Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly. I was only seven years old when I
saw the movie, but I remember it was in black and white and that no one felt
safe. Do not look behind you! The two atom bombs were dropped that summer.
There was a glittering in the sky, and it went all over the world.
Pain Management
A
recorded message says yet again that my call is important. Then the hold music
returns,“Winter” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” My condition has only worsened
in the week since I reclined on the exam table fully clothed. “On a scale of
1-10, with 1 being the lowest, how severe is your pain?” a woman in scrubs who
said her name was April asked. It would be wonderful if we could start over. I
want a temple monkey. I want an angel with wings made of eyes. I want the color
blue and an Alp at the end of my street.
Howie
Good is the author most recently of the poetry
collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago
(Laughing Ronin Press).