Funky

There was something funky about the way no one noticed as he walked the sidewalk.

The gentleman picking out fruit at the corner stand. The woman walking her dog towards him. The delivery man checking over the boxes in back of his truck. Never mind it was ten in the evening.

Not one person glanced in his direction.

He stopped at the newsstand, looked over the headlines, asked about the impending strike at the local paper. The vendor grunted noncommittally.

He fished into his pocket, as if looking for change, and drew in one smooth motion.

Everyone reacted at once.

So What

Everything appears gray or white, and after only a few days, I start to miss seeing things that are green. The people I depend on for advice don’t want to talk about it or even acknowledge a problem exists. I scan the morning headlines. Bosnians are still finding in woods and fields and under building rubble bodies from the genocide their leaders claim never happened. A year passes, two. The dentist bangs on my tooth. “That hurt?” he asks. I smell grass, hear birds chirp. It hurts. So what? A bird hasn’t an arm but the continent of the sky.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

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

The Morning Edition

Morgan Durante always dreaded reading the morning paper. The headlines were of the normally sensationalist variety, with one important caveat: this edition of the news only covered Morgan and his life.

Typical headlines read, "Durante wastes another day of worthless life at meaningless job," and "Father does awful job parenting his gifted child." The people quoted were usually his wife or an "Unnamed source with intimate knowledge of the Durante family."

Morgan would have liked to stop subscribing, but it was written by his ten-year-old daughter and his wife insisted they encourage her talent. Besides, the reporting was always accurate.