The Waltz of the Snowflakes

A soldier snatches the crying baby from its mother and swings it by the ankles and smashes its skull against a wall. All good stories, Hemingway said, end in death. I’m walking through streets I’ve never seen before, a key gripped between my thumb and forefinger. If necessary, I could use it like a knife, slashing an assailant across the face or stabbing him in the eyes or throat. Once paranoia touches you, you belong to it, you’re branded for life. A working girl leaning in a doorway grins at me with amused contempt. I hear a low rumble then, as of God clearing his throat to get everyone’s attention. Heavy snow is predicted, 6 to 8 inches, the white ash of burned corpses. 

Erik with a K

“Ah, the cows. . . ,” Erik Satie sighed with his dying breath. Killing is prohibited by the Sixth Commandment. A shame dying isn’t, too. I have what’s called radiation-induced neuropathy. The nerves in my upper torso are frequently a torment, a frenzied swarm of stinging insects trapped beneath the skin. About the only thing that cuts the pain is marijuana. It smells just as skunky as it did when I was young and cool and smoked copious amounts for nonmedicinal purposes. Now it jams the mind-body connection, interrupts pain signals. And for hours at a time cows lie down in the grass with hungry wolves.

^^^

HOWIE GOOD‘s poems have been widely published. His poetry collections include Bad for the Heart (Prolific Press) and Dark Specks in a Blue Sky (Another New Calligraphy). He is recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements. His work most recently appeared in Oblivioni in August 2024.