Lady Ogre was working out on her Peloton bike when she felt faint and dizzy and puked up a junkie. Downstairs, her sometime boyfriend, alias Captain Dread, stood with one booted foot on an alligator skull, preparing to address his talented but perverted crew of underground cartoonists. “Don’t let the page be gray,” he said in his best pirate growl. “Make it jump! Make it crackle! Blister their irises!” While he spoke, a tree had grown out of the grave of Tom Paine, patron saint of outcasts and rebels, its leaves rippling like lacerated flags bearing the skull and crossbones.



Howie Good is the author of more than two dozen poetry collections, including most recently The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press), The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro Press), and Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).