Howie Good ~ Foreboding Music

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the low­est, how severe is your pain now?” the boun­cy young med­ical assis­tant asks with mis­placed enthu­si­asm. Fifty-eight friends on Facebook offer their thoughts and prayers. But just because my con­di­tion final­ly has a name doesn’t mean it has a proven treat­ment. Cue fore­bod­ing music. An angel dressed in a clean white T‑shirt and dirty jeans hums while grind­ing bones to make bread. The Lord remains out of sight in the palace. I sit down to replay a chess game and dis­cov­er the pieces have been glued to the board.

~

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