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Howie Good :: Four poems

 



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).

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submissions :: where is the river

Up to six poems in a single .doc file with author biography and photo to kieferjdlogan@gmail.com All rights revert to the author/s upon publication.

issue twenty-seven :: January/February 2022

  Christopher Patton :: Glitch Apple Howie Good :: Three poems Kenneth M Cale :: Three visual poems Christian Ward :: Three poems Matthew Walsh :: POACHED EGGS Jeremy Scott :: Five poems

about :: where is the river

where is the river :: a poetry experiment is a bi-monthly poetry journal open to a variety of aesthetics, forms and experiences, with a preference towards showcasing work by emerging writers. There is no single path, nor any single way. Founded in September 2017. Edited by Kiefer JD Logan.