Howie Good

Hope Is Kind of Like Dominoes

I was hit with a hammer during an argument over $5. That’s the problem with most people. One day it might be a son found dead in bed from an overdose; another, high school kids raising their arms in the Nazi salute for a yearbook photo; another, an old woman sitting in the window of an East Village apartment – two, three hours, just sitting in silence. I don’t believe in the healing power of hope, but sometimes things just happen, like when the sky rumbles for a small eternity and then the light shudders, shedding white polka dots all over.



Litterbug Blues

The old bluesmen had voices as scuffed and battered as their guitar cases. We’re all, in a way, patch jobs, at risk of imminently coming apart. One of my high school teachers had been in a death camp in Poland. He told us (I’ve no fucking idea why) that after the camp was liberated, he took a trip around the world just to see if it was still there. There’s no point in pretending these things didn’t happen. Men in orange jumpsuits creep alongside the highway, each with an empty sack in one hand, a sharp stick in the other.



A Netflix Original

Two Scandinavian dudes set out in a vintage VW microbus to prove the secretary-general of the United Nations was the victim of assassination. But then, by accident, they discover an attempt to eliminate entirely the smoking of cigarettes after sex. The Scandinavians meet a leader of an underground militia who says that while that’s his signature on the document, he didn’t write the signature himself. I got to be honest, I was expecting more: maybe a “crime wall,” with photos and red strings and so on; maybe the angel of death promising in a mocking tone to stay in touch.

Howie Good is the author most recently of What It Is and How to Use It from Grey Book Press and Spooky Action at a Distance from Analog Submission Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page