Corporate-sponsored astronauts are about to touch down in the parking lot of Burger King. The coyotes and crows that usually raid the dumpsters out back fulminate against the imposition. When the land is sick, as the saying goes, the people are sick. The mixed crew of hormonal teenagers and desiccated seniors has retreated to the manager’s office behind the deep fryers. They are divvying up the day’s receipts while the manager, bound and gagged, groans in the corner. Later, a crowd of the curious will gather across the street, ask: How? Why? When? What for? The moon will rise regardless, a booger rolled into a ball.



Howie Good’s latest poetry collection, Gun Metal Sky, is due in February from Thirty West Publishing,