Art, Music, Philosophy

Our 5-year-old daughter, Celeste, was singing to herself. She suddenly stopped and said, "Why do I always fart when I sing?” Then a French farmer while plowing on a hill uncovered a rusted revolver that may be the very one Van Gogh used to shoot himself. I looked at my wife, who was looking back at me. I can’t keep drowning, I can’t. There are little children living without parents in freezing tents in detention camps. The ancient Greek stoics maintain a complicit silence. I just want it to end. Every kind of music is meant to be played loudly.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Later Life

Given the choice, I would want to be the sort of shrewd, goatish old man it’s said Rodin was, strolling the broad boulevards and ornate arcades of Paris after a productive morning in the studio, a young Russian-born French lady leaning lightly on his arm, and if her eyes were too wide apart for her to be considered a classic beauty, or if she didn’t actually read any of the books he recommended, he wouldn’t care, because it had just turned fall, and the air was like a crisp white wine, and they always felt at least a little drunk.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

The Appointment

“But everything looks so tired and worn here.”

“You were the one who wanted to come to Paris to die.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

I took her hand and pointed. “There it is. That’s the café.”

We pushed through the crowd at the door and found a table for two.

“Everyone here looks so old,” she said.

“Except for that beautiful girl at the bar.”

“Madame et monsieur. Vous desirez?”

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes.”

“Who is the beautiful girl at the bar?”

“That is Death.”

“But I thought Death was...”

“Monsieur, the older one gets the more beautiful Death becomes.”

From Guest Contributor Reynold Junker