Branded

“Do you see the donut,” the cancer specialist asks, sounding suddenly anxious, “or just the hole?” My eyes burn, though tears are 98 percent water. Once cancer touches you, you belong to it, you’re marked with the herd brand. It would take something like a miracle for me to recover. Yesterday, to the shock of tourists, a statue of the Virgin Mary in a fourteenth-century cathedral in Linz appeared to go into labor. Belief is contagious. And so, I lie in bed at night with all the windows open, listening intently to the gregarious insects at ease in the dark.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry collection, True Crime, was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.