Human Beings Are The Only Wild Animals

Whenever I fly into a foreign country, I’m afraid I’ll be dragged into a room and forced to answer questions I’ll fail to understand. “You can do better,” the examiner will say, just before firing an electric current through the alligator clips attached to my ears. By the time I’m released from custody, I’ll be bent, shriveled, gnome-like, and afflicted with tremors. These events repeat themselves in my mind on a loop, every recurrence worse than the last, now involving sleep deprivation, now an inmate orchestra playing a German requiem, now corpses sprawled half in, half out of broken caskets.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry collections are I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press. 

The Shoemaker

I was walking through my lawn when a choleric little gnome asked, “Why don't you have shoes on?”

I replied, “I’m going back inside in a sec. There’s no need for me to put on shoes.”

“I can make shoes, ya know,” the gnome said, and with a stamp of the foot added, “I will make shoes for you tonight!” I smiled and nodded.

When I checked my mousetraps in the morning, I discovered the gnome’s body strewn about my kitchen floor with but a strip of leather as a reminder of the shoe he had promised would be mine.

From Guest Contributor, Anthony Tao