Invocation

Every day seems an imitation of the day before, filled with the same tired voices, the same dreary recountings of the same dreary stories. Poets! The moon is the stub of a candle. Cast off from the shores of the ordinary. Let the darkness shine upon you. Commit thought crimes for the sheer stupid pleasure of it. Kill what is in order to fulfill what is not. And as you sit hunched over your laptop, imagine that it’s a big black piano with white teeth.

Blow to the Heart

I dreamed the other night that dreaming had been outlawed. Anyone under suspicion was promptly visited by special police. In my dream, an officer woke me with a blow to the heart. I saw to my horror that a traveling guillotine had already been assembled. Then, with the officer providing a running commentary, a technician made a hole in the top of my skull using an off-the-shelf cordless power drill. Something cold and cloudy floated up from the hole. “Only a memory,” the officer said, sounding disappointed. When the police left, they took the memory with them in a cage.

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Howie Good is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.