The pills I take at night to get to sleep leave me feeling dazed all morning. I stare stupidly at the white screen of my laptop while rubbing my head in a forlorn attempt to stimulate the language center of the brain. I think once again of Bruno Schulz. Only the first sentence of the novel he was writing when he was murdered survives: Mother awakened me in the morning, saying, “Joseph, the Messiah is near…” A Gestapo officer shot him down in the street in broad daylight. It was a kind of hobby, to be honest.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

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 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.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

The beggar standing on the corner was holding up a cardboard sign I drove past too fast to read. I heard a red alarm bell ringing when one of my students, a college junior, spelled “toxin” “tocsin” in an essay. In the surviving fragment of his book, On Analogy, Julius Caesar tells us to “Avoid strange and unfamiliar words as a sailor avoids rocks at sea,” which, I admit, seems like sensible advice. But even so, I’m not about to take writing tips from the man who started the fire that in 48 B.C. destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

I recently lost my job. With nothing much to do, I sneaked the other week into an exhibition at the Galerie der Moderne. The walls were hung with paintings by people who didn’t seem to know how to paint. However, I did enjoy the complimentary wine and the cubes of cheese on frilly toothpicks. I would have stayed longer, only there were these police around. In the old country, my great-grandfather went to fetch a ration of bread, and the loaf was sticking out of his coat when the SS officer who shot him for sport rolled his corpse over.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Famous Long Ago, a forthcoming prose poetry collection from Laughing Ronin Press.

It was the season of mists. He had been forced by necessity to pawn his one good pair of pants. Now that he couldn’t confidently appear in public, he sat sulking in his underwear at the kitchen table. He couldn’t remember, Josephine wasn’t there to remind him, what it was like to live in anticipation of making love. Adversaries swooped around him like moon-crazed bats. If he had had a suicide pill, he might have taken it. The world only ever really pays attention when there is a panic or a traveling guillotine or when all the soldiers have syphilis.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of the poetry collection Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

This is a country you only hear about when there is a failed coup or a 7.2 magnitude earthquake or all the whales have syphilis. Most days I feel as if hundreds of tiny worms with razor teeth are whittling my bones. People who have seen me grab onto a wall to keep from falling down in pain sometimes suggest I try heat or special creams. I thank them just to be polite. Meanwhile, a figure in a long black coat lurking nearby sucks on a cigarette, then expels a mouthful of smoke like the monster in a fairy tale.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s chapbook Famous Long Ago is forthcoming from Laughing Ronin Press.

The noon sun was a blazing red ember in an ashen sky. It was all anyone could talk about. Even the dogs of the kingdom were going crazy, whining and running in circles and hypersalivating. Meanwhile, on the birthing table, the Red Queen, her knees up, her legs spread apart, her multiple chins trembling, pushed and pushed and then pushed again. Music – Wagner or perhaps Sousa, something rousing – came thundering out of her. She was like a little brass ensemble playing mightily. The royal physician remained strangely calm, as though thinking, “OK, why not?” Blood had never looked so red.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

The sun was just a faint red ember in an ashen sky when I stepped onto the swaying boat. “A poet,” as Paul Celan observed before his second suicide attempt, “is a pirate.” I felt a kind of guilty freedom to be maneuvering the boat above the rush-hour streets. If only I had had a Jolly Roger! Behind the boat, I pulled a net that was soon full of strange new words for things. My pursuers cursed and cried and complained bitterly of fatigue and stress and vast distances. “Oh yeah?” I said. “Try going through life as a Howard.”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

I didn’t know you were dying until I saw what your grown daughter posted on Facebook under your name. For a minute, I wondered if I should “Like” the post as a way to convey my sympathy. Probably not, right? It was the sort of dilemma that once would have had you shaking your head in amused despair at me. Your daughter says that now you mostly just sleep. Where I am, some 1,900 miles from you, yellow daisy-like flowers that shut at night as though sleeping or even dead open at the touch of morning, bodies exploding from coffins.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

Blinking like a stunned mole against the harsh white light of the desert sun, the last of the angels steps out of his winged chariot onto the hot tarmac. Little girls in braids present him with bouquets. Jeers erupt somewhere among the hundreds of people solemnly watching the ceremonies from behind a security fence. The plainclothes police officers mixing with the crowd club everyone within reach rather than try to identify the actual culprits. On the tarmac, meanwhile, a military band strikes up a brassy tune that has long been a favorite of dictators around the world. Birds hum along.

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).