I have heard it’s bad luck to wake a student who’s sleeping in class, so I don’t, even though now the student may never know that Salvador Dali sat up on his deathbed and, weak as he was, cursed the priest who had come to shrive him. Goddamnit! When did I start to resemble a viciously defaced photo of my younger self? My thesaurus lists more than 140 words related to darkness, including dark, gloom, dimness, obscurity, blackness, night. The night is long, long, and in the morning, the children have to walk by the slaughterhouse on their way to school.
Howie Good is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest, scheduled for publication in summer 2022.
Eunoia Review 