Howie Good And Grandmothers Protecting Spiders, Days In Teardrop Shapes, The Shortage Of Coffins, And A Mountain Incident

Laugh and the World Laughs with You; Weep and You Are a Soft Pillow 



Different people come in and take turns beating us. Sometimes they’re trying to get information. Other times they’re just amusing themselves. They ask all sorts of questions: Where’s that ocean at? What happened to your ear? Do ants eat each other? Last month, I went a week without sleeping. It was bam-bam-bam, the sound when a dude keeps his finger on the trigger. Most men just like killing stuff. Babies were tossed onto a pile of burning rubbish. If the color of the fire was in a dress, it would have been beautiful.



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“Holy cow!” I say. “Come over here guys.” The fireflies have brought me to water. And we all start laughing because it’s hard to believe. People, animals, birds, they all change. My grandmother when I was little would pick up a spider she found in the house and put it back outside. There's two places I want to go. They're the only two. It could be England, it could be France. It could be the moon. 



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Bodies arrive in shreds. Some arrive in halves. There’s no place anymore where you can say that it’s safe. If you have a carefree attitude, you’ll be an easy target. One guy was like, ‘Oh, not a big deal, nothing will happen, sit down.’ So, obviously, he didn’t understand our circumstances. Try to notice the cold, wet sensation. It’s tomorrow in the shape of a teardrop.




All That Is Solid Melts into Air 



This could be a former crime scene anywhere. One room in particular has never gotten over its ferocious past. I like to see things that maybe I’m not supposed to see. The dog is a he, but the table is a she. I couldn't really make out what they were saying, it happened so quickly. People should be concerned over what will disappear next. Today there was even a shortage of coffins. I tell myself, “Breathe, just breathe. We’re here. We’re working. We exist.” But it’s all a bit of a blur. The last time I felt like this was probably when my mother died. Any minute now I might look up and see her in the window of a plane waving.






Cannibal Lunch 



I thought he was going to offer me a ride, but, as I approached the car, a mountain rose to confuse us. I said, “Hey, man, you all right?” It was a warm spring day, and the universe was presiding over its own prolonged rebirth. Birds that hadn’t learned to fly yet were about to be hauled away in trucks. The neighbors just stood there texting. “What does it mean?” the guy asked. He was lucky he had any teeth left. In general, people are beaten, hurt. I saw a black mass of smoke. I heard something that sounded like an orchestra of broken instruments. That was me trying to understand what a friend was.


Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize and forthcoming from Thoughtcrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. 

Jeffrey Zable Joins A Bull(Shit) Company, Learns The Speechlessness Of Discovery, And Inherits A Wolf-Bitten Grandma

THE REALIZATION 

 I was running with the bulls when all of a sudden
I shouted out, “This is bullshit!” and turned to face
my assailants. With that, one of the bulls nearest to me,
responded, ‘What did I just hear you say?” And realizing
the peril of my situation I answered, “I said ‘this world
is run by bulls,’ animals who know how to take charge
and not feel guilty or remorseful when they trample over 
someone who’s in their way!” With that the bull told me 
to write my email address on one of his horns; that he 
was a CEO and could use me in his company. He said 
he’d be in touch soon and that he considered our meeting 
to be prophetic. He then told me to exit through the door 
on my left before they’d made another turn, because there 
was sometimes killing, and at the very least, several who 
got hurt and wound up spending considerable time recovering. 
Thanking him, I did exactly as he suggested but realized 
that I forgot to ask him which company he owned 
and how he planned to use me.



WHAT I DISCOVERED 

 is that it’s the down time that really matters.
What we do between the seconds of joy and the waiting 
for something to happen that turns out to be a dream 
in which the spider sucks the juice out of the fly
like the proverbial milkshake we used to enjoy
before our favorite hamburger joint went out of business. 
What else I discovered is that my 7th grade Spanish teacher 
put all the pretty girls in the front of the class
so he could look under their dresses, laugh with them,
and teach them the good stuff like Te quiero
and Tu casa es mi casa while us boys sat in the back
imagining violent birds flying through the window 
and pecking out our eyes for no other reason than they could.
And in the end I realized that each and every one of us
wants what we want for ourselves first, 
that only if we’ve grown tired of what we have
are we willing to share with the person who fell by the wayside,
who can hardly lift themselves up to take another breath 
between the fumes in the air 
and the putrid smell of excrement on the water. 
It’s all a discovery that leaves most of us speechless, 
wondering why we continue to live in such a condition, 
which is always conditional 
on the day, the time, and century in which we live. . .



ANOTHER STORY 


After Little Red and I were married we bought a cottage
near her Grandma so that we could keep an eye on her. 
At first, we visited Grandma every day, but as Red and 
I got busier and busier we were only able to stop by once
or twice per week. 
Knowing how vulnerable Grandma was to wolves in the area, 
we bought her an alarm system that sounded at our house 
if there was trouble.
Everything was fine for a few months until one night
the alarm went off at about 3 a.m. and Red and I rushed
to Grandma’s house as fast as we could. 
When we opened Grandma’s bedroom door we saw that she 
was half way down a wolf’s throat. 
Immediately, I picked up a chair and slammed it against the wolf’s 
back which made him cough up Grandma, who understandably 
was shaken and confused.
And before I had a chance to slam the chair over the wolf’s head, 
he fled through the open window. 
After this incident Red decided that Grandma should live with us, 
which turned out O.K. because most of the time she was never 
in our way. 
Eventually we sold Grandma’s house to a nice family of bears 
who soon became our friends and trusted neighbors.
Everything was fine until three depraved little pigs and their
sociopathic mother moved into the neighborhood. 
From there, things went from bad to worse, the specifics of which 
I’ll save for another story. . .






Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro Cuban Folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. Recent writing in MockingHeart Review, Colloquial, Ordinary Madness, Third Wednesday, After The Pause, Tower Journal, Fear of Monkeys, Brickplight, Tigershark, Corvus, and many others. In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.