The Suicide Museum

If I’m wearing a woeful expression on my face, maybe it’s because I lost an erection or must seem to sympathize with someone who has. The other day I couldn’t think of the word “exacerbate.” Meanwhile, I still can’t decide on my preferred pronoun. This kind of thing never used to happen. Now it’s routine, like, say, requiring proof of age to enter the Suicide Museum. You can view the gun with which Van Gogh shot himself, billed as "the most famous weapon in the history of art," or visit a special exhibit on doomsday cults. Afterwards, I have murder in my eyes and my hands clutched around my own throat.

Night Sweats

Jewish graves desecrated. Dogs and animals eating the corpses. Not everything is a
metaphor for something else. I should have accumulated more in the way of wisdom by
now. Instead, I have cancer markers and a medical marijuana card and a legally sketchy
prescription for oxy. The T-shirt I slept in last night is soaked through. It’s as if sometime
before morning I was subjected to a mysterious process that wrung every last drop of
moisture from the dark, sodden cloud of my soul. There are borders but no boundaries. I
am the theorem and the proof, the frantic sirens and the warplanes.

Howie Good is co-editor of the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry. His latest poetry collection is Frowny Face (2023) from Redhawk Publications.