Someone has posted
a picture of Somali
child soldiers
on telephone poles
around town.
The only store open
is out of the pills
you take. You can’t
fall asleep without
dreaming you’re
calmly being stabbed.
When you leave home
the next morning,
the mice you keep
in a fish tank
dash their heads
against the glass.
Your office-mate sulks
over your imagined
slights. What do you
think I should be
for Halloween?
he later asks.
a picture of Somali
child soldiers
on telephone poles
around town.
The only store open
is out of the pills
you take. You can’t
fall asleep without
dreaming you’re
calmly being stabbed.
When you leave home
the next morning,
the mice you keep
in a fish tank
dash their heads
against the glass.
Your office-mate sulks
over your imagined
slights. What do you
think I should be
for Halloween?
he later asks.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 18 print and digital poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick (2009).
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