Two Prose Poems

Eulogy for a Friend by Howie Good

I was Googling how to write a resume when I learned that a friend had vanished, weighed down by her hair. At the memorial service her incomplete collection of state flowers was briefly on display. Music streamed from microcomputers hidden among the attendees. It must have been Bach, the palest blues sung by man. The eulogist, a horse-faced Brit with a plummy accent, recited eight explosive facts about orgasms. No one but me seemed to think it strange that beneath our chairs the rats just went on building their maze.

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Urgent Care by Howie Good

The young X-ray tech wears her hair short like Joan of Arc. She says, "Just do what the machine says." Is this real? The machine says in not an impolite voice, "Breathe in and hold your breath." It’s precisely the sort of difficulty that appeals to generals and kings. Nearby but out of sight a woman meets the man who received her dead brother’s face. Oh, if only I could get a pretty accomplice to slip over the border with me!