Well, Well, Well

God arrived on the 5:15 train. I met him at the station. His hollow-cheeked face faintly resembled Julius Caesar’s. As I drove him downtown to a transient hotel, he seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. He stared morosely out the window at the approaching skyline. “That abominable steeple,” he muttered as a popular church came into view. I had read somewhere that he sought out quarrels, enjoyed indulging in the casual violence of a fascist thug, but he didn’t seem particularly belligerent or vicious, just tired and sad. He acted, if anything, like he didn’t believe he ought to exist.

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My American Dream

My old grandmother is being forced by a mob to climb a tree and chirp like a bird, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’ve already been expelled from my job and apartment and required to register with the police. People like me are forbidden to go to the cinema or theater or even sit on a park bench. Any moment now an officer will stick a gun in my face and order me to strip naked and crawl on all fours across the grass. Children will point and laugh. Grown-ups will struggle to get a better view.

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Howie Good’s latest poetry collections are The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).