Poetry: Selection From Howie Good
Cancer Treatment
“Do you see the donut,” the cancer
specialist asks, “or just the hole?” My eyes burn, though there’s only water in
tears. Once cancer touches you, you belong to it, you’re marked with its ugly
brand. Yesterday, to the screams of horrified tourists, a statue of the Virgin
Mary in a cathedral in Linz, Austria, appeared to go into labor. Belief is
elastic. And so, I lie in bed at night with the windows open, listening in on
the gregarious insects at ease in the dark.
Another Holocaust Remembrance Day
I was born with a hole in me and so
went searching for a way to fill it. You would think that by now I would belong
to myself, but God’s justice is unreliable, a clock that runs slow. My
ancestors were forced in the Middle Ages to wear pointed hats and yellow
badges. Inevitably, they would be slaughtered in pogroms or expelled. It’s our
turn. “Hitler should come back and gas you!” Jew haters yell. Despite the hair
of the corpses in the crematorium ovens catching fire first, it was the head
that always took longest to burn.
Insomniac
“Are you a back sleeper,” the
mattress salesman asks, “or a side sleeper?” I’m a bad sleeper, tossing and
turning beside my wife, who barely stirs. Eventually, I’ll throw off the
blanket, slip out of bed, and go downstairs. I am by nature a worrier. At the
moment I’m most worried about an upcoming procedure that involves threading a
tube through a blood vessel in the arm or leg, allowing the doctor to see
inside my heart. There might be disease. There might be blockages. The heart
might look like our mismanaged planet, ruined by the catastrophic effects of
stupidity and self-righteous arrogance. The wonder isn’t that I can’t sleep,
but that anyone can.
The Nature of Things
I was standing by a tree as the dog
did his business. The wind, which can reach deafening speeds here on the
island, was uncustomarily still. Then a bird in the tree squeaked like a
squeeze toy. I looked up. From wherever it was hiding among the leaves, the
bird squeaked again, a sound seemingly designed more for comic effect
than evolutionary advantage. Only later would it occur to me that we ourselves
make weird noises when undergoing the secret torture of sad thoughts.
Lemon Slushie
Day and night the Amazon delivery
vans drop off brown packages. Too many people are preparing for something that
won’t ever happen or that already has. Just because there’s no specific law
against it doesn’t mean it isn’t a kind of crime. I’m exhausted by the effort
required to think beyond the present moment, one part sugar to three parts
water. My dream revealed what it’s like for the frozen embryos that never
became babies. “Why would you do this to us?” they scold. Teaching a child to
not step on a caterpillar helps get me where I’m going.
Howie Good's latest poetry collection, True
Crime, was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.