In Lieu of Flowers / Resurrection Song by Howie Good

In Lieu of Flowers

A first cousin my age dead from an overdose, a childhood friend dead from a rare cancer, my very nice mother-in-law dead from Alzheimer’s, a twenty-something student of mine dead from an undetected heart condition. Death, death, death, death. Some say it’s God’s will, but others that it’s pure slaughter. I don’t know. Maybe. There are times I’ll find myself staring at the back of people’s heads on the commuter bus with just so much sadness.

 

Resurrection Song

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.