Howie Good-

NATURE LOVER

I took a long, slow drive

out into the country

just to watch the leaves die.

WAKING UP IN RECOVERY

It was late at night inside me. The nurse on duty believed in the therapeutic properties of art. Bullet-riddled bodies stood around my bed making small talk. Ethics was discussed back then, when it was discussed at all, as what you shouldn’t do rather than what you should. A bird might just as well have been pecking out my conscience. At the edge of my vision was a clock without hands. No one I met considered it hypocrisy to dream in fragments, but bleed in full sentences.