A Beginner’s Guide To Dystopia

From the street outside, a loudspeaker boomed, “According to the decree of the 17th of this month on the Abolition of Walls.” I got up from the table where I was reading and went over to the window. Banners with the slogan “Public Interest Comes Before Self-Interest” fluttered in endless repetition down the street. Practically right under my window, officers were clubbing a man who lay crumpled on the pavement. I sighed, then went and sat back down and found my place in the book – sea nymphs with red seaweed hair were sunning themselves on the ledges of seaside cliffs.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of THE DEATH ROW SHUFFLE, a poetry collection forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Holocaust

One person in six hasn’theard of the Holocaust, doesn’t know what it is, a planet of smoke andflames. Seventy year ago my relatives didn’t believe it was there, andthen they walked through the gate and under the slogan, Arbeit MachtFrei, and found they suddenly had a dismal view of God’s back frominside the barbed wire. So I look around, and though the times areterrifying, try to act like a kind of thunderstorm blue, like I can seeclouds in the shape of a woman’s mighty body and feel the rain thathasn’t fallen yet.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

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