Because the horizon for humanity is so cold and sharp, the edge of an executioner’s axe, I try my best to stay up on the news, but today as the anchorman repeats something in a smug professorial tone about warlords, sex traffickers, a truckload of dead bodies, I’m staring at his teeth and wondering how he gets them that white, and just then there’s a flicker and a commercial comes on, and I’m shunted across ancient extinct borders to a country where slender young women with hollow cheeks and large feverish eyes languish for want of the latest phone plan.
Axe and You Shall Receive
Howie Good
What is the significance of this work to you?
The pieces are attempts to transmute difficult emotions and experiences into something more inhabitable.
What is the significance of the form you chose for this work?
Prose poetry is a liminal form. As such, there are fewer expectations about what can be expressed in it and how it can be expressed. I find that exhilarating.
What was your process for creating this work?
Each piece went through numerous drafts. Writing for me is essentially rewriting.
Howie Good's latest full-length poetry collection, Gun Metal Sky, is due in early 2021 from Thirty West Publishing.