There are always more volunteers than available spots on the firing squad. But the really terrible part isn’t how cold it is out. It’s how much I tremble. The I Ching advises, “Wait in the meadow,” meaning caring for a cow will bring luck. I can remember a time when everyone wasn’t in such a hurry to fuck off to somewhere. Now, whatever phone number I punch in, the suicide hotline picks up. I think about mentioning this to someone. And then I get distracted by the wind and the rain and the loud kissing noises they seem to make.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

He presented himself at Licensed Brothel No. 1 and asked with formal politeness for the girl named Rachel. When she appeared, dressed for work in stockings and a slip, he handed her his ear (or, more precisely, the lower half of his left ear, wrapped in cloth). “Guard this object carefully,” he said without prelude, and you would’ve thought he was bestowing on her a fabulous piece of art. Then he turned and walked away. She was accustomed to getting freaky requests from men in her boudoir, but this was a first. The police said call if it happened again.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Gregory Corso was sitting in the window of Allen Ginsberg’s East Village apartment – two, three hours, just sitting in silence. He had vowed to himself not to be a willing participant to any further chaos. Just to be every day, it took everything. You could be having a really nice time at the beach or the park one minute and in the next minute there could be cops with meaty red faces gassing and clubbing you. Once at a reading some lady asked him, “What’s an id?” and he waited a bit before answering, “Eighteenth-century sea captains carousing in Surinam.”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of The Titanic Sails at Dawn (Alien Buddha Press, 2019).

Just before dawn, the train barreled across the border. My carryall bag on the overhead rack contained an entire set of ant-dreams preserved in amber. Spies lurked everywhere, but, after the train pulled in, I evaded them by frequently changing my facial expressions. Later that day, I traveled by sampan and pedicab to meet my contact, an experienced agent posing as an English nanny. We met in a neighborhood playground beside a tree whose round fruit the children pretended were bombs. At one point I forgot the word “cremated” and had to ask her, “What’s it called – incinerating the body?”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of The Titanic Sails at Dawn (Alien Buddha Press, 2019).

The only store open at that hour was out of the first-aid cream I needed. Security cameras recorded what happened next. I ran amok in the chips and candy aisle, as if a slave to junk food. It was scary how much I could pack in. By the time the cops showed up, I was outside again and a cat had become just a red smear in the road. Someone recently asked me how I would describe red to a blind person. I shrugged. No one wants your honest opinion, ever. They may say they do, but they really don’t.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of The Titanic Sails at Dawn (Alien Buddha Press, 2019)

A banner stretching across the building’s exterior says, “What’s Shakin’.” You aren’t sure how that should be read, as a description or a question. There’s only one way to find out. You enter through an unmarked door, walk down a long, dim hallway and up a set of stairs into an area filled with bad smells and loud noise. If you’re going to be stranded somewhere, this may not be the best place. The caregivers take frequent breaks to look out the large windows. It isn’t safe or legal, but they’re Americans and believe they can do whatever they want.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of three recent collections, I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books, A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submission Press, and The Titanic Sails at Dawn from Alien Buddha Press.

There was a guillotine in the basement. People in the surrounding buildings reacted by hurling rocks and bottles. The whole thing felt suspicious, like someone was trying to send me a message. So I started cutting out images of crashes and mass shootings from the newspaper and transferring them onto the surface of prison-issued soaps. Then I figured out a way to do that onto the prison sheets. The residue that accumulated on the floor and walls took on a life of its own. Now what do we do? The window provides enough natural light to keep the snake alive.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Having fallen asleep in one town, Thoreau woke up in another, intent on uncovering what had happened to the organ grinder’s monkey. He did everything he could, but with no electricity, there was very little he actually could do. Meanwhile, the police mistook a man in a green suit walking in the forest for Thoreau. The man confessed right off to visiting the pirate queen in her cave. When Emerson dropped in on Thoreau that afternoon, he had the same question as everyone else, “Is this even real?” which was yet another reason why Thoreau loved trees more than people.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submission Press.

Not just anyone could stay at the castle that claimed in its promotional literature to be Kafka’s birthplace. A person needed a proven reason to be there – in our case, your egg and my semen. I didn’t want to rush you, but my Viagra was starting to wear off. You were seeing something no one else had ever seen when the police burst in, waving their nightsticks and demanding, “Who’s the bad man? What does he look like?” This makes everything sound worse than it was, especially as a whale in the harbor was spouting purple music the whole time.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is on the pavement, thinking about the government.

The next time you’re caught in a really bad place – the kind of place where people are always asking each other, “Oh why can’t they get that baby out of the ground?” – take some frequently used verbs and combine them in a bowl with Hindu magnet incense, a bit of forgotten history, brain fluid, and warm dog’s breath, and then let the mixture sit for 20 minutes, after which you should be able to see a faint glow up there, see it coming over the hill, women wearing sky blue T-shirts that say “Quaker” and waving signs that say “Love.”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s latest collections are I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press.