Howie Good
Dispatch From the Crash Site
1
When I woke up, I was here, surrounded by objects I might need. There was a cow, or at least what I thought was a cow – it was hovering and it wasn’t an aircraft. I felt as if saints in red robes were discoing inside my head. How could anything bother me on such a day? Just then it started raining. I mean, something happened, something I didn’t actually see, a girl with short bangs caught on video surveillance chopping a piano for firewood.
2
And what’s this supposed to be a drawing of? An angel under sedation? A figure on the cross, tears spouting from his nipples? The world has developed a taste for the miserable, the beheaded Christian prisoners who can’t quite get things together. My own life seems kind of Laurel and Hardy, a kiss of fire accelerant, the whole jamboree vulnerable to the odd stick of dynamite. Souvenir hunters won’t even bother to wait for the “all clear” before they begin searching through the wreckage.
3
Sitting in a pensive lotus position came to be considered the ultimate act, more than just suicide. Moments of exhaustion led to a glimpse of everything being pulverized. The largest pieces were the size of a small car, while the black flecks scattered across a remote mountain included two babies. Halfway through Tuesday afternoon, the weather deteriorated, with a chilly rain falling, so I thought it sounded just like that, the head of a sobbing woman.
Howie Good’s latest poetry collections include Fugitive Pieces from Right Hand Pointing Press and The Cruel Radiance of What Is from Another New Calligraphy.