Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Matt Borczon's Oak Cabinet Legacy, Perils Of Bad Jobs, And Being Hung In The Tulsa County Jail

It Was

a story
I heard
many times
both from
Sherrie and
from Dottie
her mom

how one time 
in a department store 
Dottie was 
really wanting
 this beautiful
 oak cabinet
 but told her 
kids she wanted 
but did not 
need it 
when Sherrie 
says mom 
we have 
all the things 
we need 
but none 
of the things 
we want 
so Dottie 
bought it 
with the 
child support 
check they 
only sometimes 
got in 
the mail

Sherrie died
about ten
years later 
of an 
overdose 
proof that 
she was 
always more 
interested 
in what 
she wanted 
than what 
she needed 


and Dottie
died at 80 
of old age 
and a 
broken heart
I don’t know 
which of 
her kids 
got that 
cabinet when 
they cleaned 
out her house. 


Today is all 

about the 
grinding gears 
the rattle 
and hum 
the icy 
wind across 
my windshield 

as I 
drive too 
fast towards 
a job 
I really 
don’t want 
to go to 
at all. 


I want you to 


Hang me 
in the 
Tulsa County 
stars sing 
me lovely
lady May 
I want 
you to 
hold me 
like the 
baby Jesus 
in the 
painting of 
the 3 
handed Madonna 
I want 
you to 
make me 
a pallet 
on your 
floor cry 
me a river 
love me 
like a 
blues song 
drive me 
like you 
stole me 
out of 
a banker’s 
four car 
garage.


Matthew Borczon is a nurse and Navy Corpsman from Erie Pa. He served in the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-2011; he writes about his experiences on Camp Bastion and about the difficulties he has had since coming home. 

 

Monday, November 21, 2022

Howie Good Returns With Invisible Powers, The Titanic Shipyard, And Bonfire-Sized Roses

 In Lieu of Flowers

I told the doctors flat out, “Cure me or kill me,” only to be strapped down like the ladder on the roof of the white work van, but not before I managed to channel the zealotry of a martyr an declare every day should be a mental health day, something that was feeling suddenly necessary now that a first cousin about my age had died from an overdose, an unsuspected heart condition, invisibility, if the invisible is defined as “what light cannot illuminate,” or just so much sadness.

&

My dad tried to kill himself three times. Well, four if you count the time he fell asleep smoking in bed and woke up with the mattress on fire. That country no longer exists. I remember because I arrived on a ship built in the same shipyard as the Titanic. Others who came from faraway don’t want to believe their own memories. Each night the moon grows darker. The family dog wails like a soul in hell demented by unbearable pain. A lot of things happen that just kind of happen; for example, the human skulls on sale on Etsy.

&

I was born in the rain and the dark – a vague but sinister omen. Almost immediately, familiar words were given unfamiliar meanings; familiar objects, unfamiliar names. I grew up surrounded on three sides by ghosts imprisoned behind barbed wire. Today’s rain falls on yesterday. A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard has been arrested in Bavaria on 3,518 counts of being an accessory to murder. Up, you corpses! Get up! Wounds heal from the inside out. It’s only a matter of weeks perhaps before there are wild roses the size of bonfires.


Howie Good 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