After about a thousand years, it was dawn, napalm on wildflowers, the flames waving in a busy kind of way, equal parts light and dark. A boy with a clubfoot hobbled down the path through the park, clutching a prescription nobody could fill. The birds felt bad for him. “Acapulco Gold,” they murmurred as he limped under the trees. “Chicago Green, Manhattan Silver.” He pretended not to hear them, and I pretended not to see the mangy-looking lions crouching behind the bushes as if about to spring.
Urban Jungle
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Middle of Nowhere (Olivia Eden Publishing) and the forthcoming poetry chapbooks The Complete Absence of Twilight (Mad Hat Press), Echo's Bones and Danger Falling Debris (Red Bird Chapbooks), and An Armed Man Lurks in Ambush (unbound CONTENT). He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.