Issue 6: Howie Good
Armageddon Mon Amour
1
Low-flying planes surrender their tears. The choice is always the same, wake up for good or turn over in your sleep. In the peach orchard the children seek the scant cover of leaves. You’re pretty sure there’s no e in lightning.
2
Follow the weather of longing, fat, pink Rubenesque clouds, signs that say Evacuation Route, the sound of heavy doors opening and closing in the architecture of voids, as the gunship slips away, the queen of hearts and her retinue on deck, and the murk of twilight shushing the world and everything in it.
3
Police on horses tried to keep control. People ran along the streets, opening their mouths and shrieking, little fountains of blood gushing out. She had pictured it beginning differently. What o’clock is it? a red rooster wanted to know. The blood stood in puddles in some places in the road. It was all strangely old-fashioned, the sunlight in her hair making a glory about her head.
4
It was like seeing someone you love go mad and do horrible things. Those who couldn’t walk were beaten. In an insignificant café down a back street, parents exchanged children. The air was all murderous iron, a long wailing sound, invented especially for the end of the world.
Stacked Coffins
1
On the hour,
assistants gave
schoolchildren
tours of the silent
woods,
the leaves bullet-
shredded and prone
to melancholy.
I hoped I wasn’t
where I thought I was.
2
Chandelier flares,
their fall slowed
by parachutes,
light up the ashes.
The gray car
with the gray men
comes almost
every day.
3
Clear skies
and a bomber’s
moon.
We look at one another
with the mute despair
that has become
a kind of greeting.
That’s That
No matter
how much
she tries
the lights
don’t flicker
Must be
the pills
he’s taking
children
with helpless
little hands
Howie Good is the author a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, as well as 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently, Hello, Darkness, available from Deadly Chaps. He blogs at http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com.
