Howie Good
American Dreamer
It was the 1950s
and everyone said plastics
were going to be big
so he fashioned elephants
into darling watering cans
Real Cool
You can’t tell whether
we’re upside down or right side up,
you can’t tell what’s here,
a typo or gilt lettering on glass,
but those real cool sounds are coming,
like when we were young
and did it anytime, anywhere
(floor, office chair, shower),
only with a yes and incidental light.
Listening to a Seashell
1
All I can sort of hear
is the wheezing of an old woman
wheeling a day-old baby
in a supermarket cart
down deliberately dim aisles
2
her gasp on encountering
in the freezer section
the man who received
her dead brother’s face
3
and then a commotion of words
said over the squalling baby
found abandoned next to the frozen desserts
Hilarity Ensues
An unknown person or persons (excuse the jargon) entered the offices of the Minister of Drought, opened the safes and files, and wiped the baby’s chin, after which a special investigator was appointed, grimacing like a bust of Beethoven, only to discover that a lapse in the space-time continuum may be a theoretical possibility, but not something that has actually happened, and even if it did, the teenagers in the first few cars of the plunging roller coaster would still be laughing.