Three poems // Howie Good

Finding Them Gone

An honor student was shot in the face. Just some guy driving past shot him. No one warned me before I stepped inside the room for the first time that things pass by in the night. Many people

sat on the floor. There was the glare of phones being checked, e-mails being sent. Who are we anyway? When you look in the mirror, who is there? Stare, pry, eavesdrop, a little like a

detective. Squeeze your siblings and tell everyone you love them. It’s about time you did. You

aren’t here long. Look at me. I’m beginning to understand something about it.

You Are Special

Cave painters depicted running animals by showing them with eight legs. It reminds me of my grandmother, how she’d pick up a spider she found in the house and put it back outside. Look up there. The sky is so thoroughly that blue she adored it’s impossible to believe she isn’t still alive to see it. Don’t you think it’s time for love? Everything else has failed, the leaves erupting in morbid colors, Dragon’s Blood, Uranium Yellow, Mummy Brown. What’s important isn’t how it’s going to happen, but that it happens, and each silent shining snowflake proceed to fall in the exact right place.

Run Hide Fight

The crime tip hotline rings continuously. I’m like. “Who are these people?” Only the guy who runs the souvenir shop in the basement next to the bathrooms seems unimpressed. Meanwhile, the survivors drift about on shaky legs. They can’t believe they’re still alive. Run Hide Fight. It’s an intricate dance. You don’t want to fuck it up. The man with a gun may be gone – or he may be over there, reloading. Listen, have you seen Betty? She’s disappeared. I can picture her lying in the shade of beautiful trees. It’s a place I’d go if I just knew how to get there.

//

Howie Good is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. His other books include A Ghost Sings, a Door Opens from Another New Calligraphy and Robots vs. Kung Fu from AngelHouse Press. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.