Howie Good
BROKEN IN THREE PLACES
Somehow we were always expecting something like this, a strange wind off the Atlantic, moaning and cursing and full of old hurts, tearing the shingles from roofs and slamming birds against windows, threatening to fling us, too, into another country, where there are roadblocks and random document checks and coked-up child soldiers with machine guns cradled in their skinny arms, and still it comes as a shock, so many people given a kick and a shove and warned to move on, a pretty crappy way to die, when we might have just stayed together under a green tent of leaves.
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Any storm this terrible used to be given a woman’s name. People got the idea from high-profile celebrities who hanged themselves. We’re constantly searching for our reflections in the abyss of popular culture. Who do we want to be? It could be two people in love. It could be two people fighting. The shape could be a body. Some could even look like crowns, if only by coincidence. We're looking at every option we can to begin to understand what’s happening. The wind is expressed by wavy lines, and the oncoming catastrophe by shadows miming the fury of black-winged archangels.
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Have you ever been in the shower when there was an earthquake? Dated a relative by accident? Wanted to eat toothpaste? Ripped off your pants while dancing? A lot of things happened yesterday. You know they happened, but don’t necessarily know the details. Mannequin arms that a buddy gave me. Heads that look like pumpkins collapsed and rotting in a field. Two ghosts discussing invisibility in front of a mirror. I see them every day. I can’t keep doing that. It’s scary, and it’s messy, the buckets there on the floor failing to catch all the falling drops of rain.
CANNIBAL SNACKS
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.
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About 5 in the morning, while most of the passengers were still asleep, the train barreled across the border between the sacred and the profane. My carryall bag on the overhead rack contained an entire set of ant-dreams in polished amber. Spies lurked everywhere. I would shake them by the time I met my contact, who was posing as a nanny, some days later. We were standing in a playground beside a tree whose palm-sized 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?”
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Jack Kerouac slept with merchant seamen. William Burroughs wouldn’t remove his hat. When he stared at something for a long time, his eyes took on the vertical pupils of a reptile. The two men discussed biblical prophecies in hallucinatory language and then ran amuck in an all-night food mart, slaves to junk food. It was scary how much they packed in. Someone recently asked if I had tried to speak to them. I said I wasn’t there. I hadn’t been born yet. Many years would go by before anyone would realize that among the 20 most common passwords is “trustno1.”
Somehow we were always expecting something like this, a strange wind off the Atlantic, moaning and cursing and full of old hurts, tearing the shingles from roofs and slamming birds against windows, threatening to fling us, too, into another country, where there are roadblocks and random document checks and coked-up child soldiers with machine guns cradled in their skinny arms, and still it comes as a shock, so many people given a kick and a shove and warned to move on, a pretty crappy way to die, when we might have just stayed together under a green tent of leaves.
&
Any storm this terrible used to be given a woman’s name. People got the idea from high-profile celebrities who hanged themselves. We’re constantly searching for our reflections in the abyss of popular culture. Who do we want to be? It could be two people in love. It could be two people fighting. The shape could be a body. Some could even look like crowns, if only by coincidence. We're looking at every option we can to begin to understand what’s happening. The wind is expressed by wavy lines, and the oncoming catastrophe by shadows miming the fury of black-winged archangels.
&
Have you ever been in the shower when there was an earthquake? Dated a relative by accident? Wanted to eat toothpaste? Ripped off your pants while dancing? A lot of things happened yesterday. You know they happened, but don’t necessarily know the details. Mannequin arms that a buddy gave me. Heads that look like pumpkins collapsed and rotting in a field. Two ghosts discussing invisibility in front of a mirror. I see them every day. I can’t keep doing that. It’s scary, and it’s messy, the buckets there on the floor failing to catch all the falling drops of rain.
CANNIBAL SNACKS
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.
&
About 5 in the morning, while most of the passengers were still asleep, the train barreled across the border between the sacred and the profane. My carryall bag on the overhead rack contained an entire set of ant-dreams in polished amber. Spies lurked everywhere. I would shake them by the time I met my contact, who was posing as a nanny, some days later. We were standing in a playground beside a tree whose palm-sized 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?”
&
Jack Kerouac slept with merchant seamen. William Burroughs wouldn’t remove his hat. When he stared at something for a long time, his eyes took on the vertical pupils of a reptile. The two men discussed biblical prophecies in hallucinatory language and then ran amuck in an all-night food mart, slaves to junk food. It was scary how much they packed in. Someone recently asked if I had tried to speak to them. I said I wasn’t there. I hadn’t been born yet. Many years would go by before anyone would realize that among the 20 most common passwords is “trustno1.”
Copyright © Howie Good 2019
Howie Good 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. He appeared in Molly Bloom 11 and 16.
