Montana Woman

I didn’t know you were dying until I saw what your grown daughter posted on Facebook under your name. For a minute, I wondered if I should “Like” the post as a way to convey my sympathy. Probably not, right? It was the sort of dilemma that once would have had you shaking your head in amused despair at me. Your daughter says that now you mostly just sleep. Where I am, some 1,900 miles from you, yellow daisy-like flowers that shut at night as though sleeping or even dead open at the touch of morning, bodies exploding from coffins.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

The Death And Life Of The Avant-Garde

When Franz K. was taken off the train in the middle of the night, he came to on a street of futuristic glass towers that, from an architectural perspective, were already passé. “What are those buildings?” he asked his keeper, a tall, thin, priestly figure who emanated an aura of gentle authority. “You’ll find out,” the keeper said, smiling. He never did. By the time the sun rose, he was tied to a post, watching in terror the firing squad assemble. It was sort of like avant-garde cinema where a series of incidents doesn’t necessarily add up to a plot.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).