Howie Good



The McDead

Look at this,
showers of gunfire and stabbings
in a distinct shade of yellow.
Art show? Performance? Gunfight?

People think gunshots are normal.
If they wait long enough,
a bullet may come through their window.

Please be sure to let me know the outcome.
And yes, please keep the blood.



The Fluffy White Dog Is Having an Existential Crisis

The fluffy white dog
is looking at me
with doubtful eyes.

It’s a look that suggests
he’s capable of having
an existential crisis.

I look back at the dog
as if he could answer
something for me:

How is the “I” dotted?



Terrorist Angel Babies

A carnival barker in Coney Island is shouting
“The two-headed baby from Puerto Rico!
The 5-year-old mother from Peru!” The girl
pictured in the poster has a saw in her hand.
She’s cutting off a piece of ham inscribed
with the words “Corpus Christi,” Latin for
body of Christ. It means her dress will drop
down and be eaten by rats. As we learned
in the first 10 years of terrorist angel babies,
some mystics look for difficult situations –
situations with maximum distractions (Pit Bull fights,
Rosie’s tea party, etc.) – in order to improve
their ability to meditate. For instance, one mystic
tried to meditate while having sex. Listening
to the carnival barker is almost certainly easier.



Asparagus

Ah, go back!
The garden isn’t purple enough,
mostly red and blue.

Start again, this time
with obscene iterations
of the title vegetable,
what a poet might be doing here.



Howie Good is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.
 
 
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