by Howie Good

Why Spiders Have Eight Legs

I said, “Hey, man, you all right?” Cries and whimpers were the only response I got. It’s not that the world is ending. It’s just that the human race is becoming a suicide cult. When I was little, if my grandma found a spider in the house, she would always pick it up and put it back outside. One was later seen a couple thousand miles away in Oklahoma.

Like a Refugee

Friends I haven’t seen in years have been telling each other that I died in 2010 under sordid circumstances — debt-ridden, detested, abandoned by everyone, communicating only with pigeons on a Boston campus. What is true is that my car has disappeared. I left it around the corner when I went up last night to this woman’s apartment. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not always having sex. Most of us have got scars and stuff up and down our bodies, small flimsy boats that give no promise of arrival.

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Howie Good is the author of The Loser’s Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from Thoughtcrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.