The 2River View
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Howie Good

Multilingual

She speaks seven languages, none of them well enough to
teach. At the gym everyone else using the treadmills is
fat. I like the way she looks in her tall, red leather
boots, with the tightly packed buildings of the old
downtown rearing up behind her. Freud described dreams as
day residues. The best advice I could offer was, Don’t
fall asleep. It grew dark while we talked about it. She
had a train to catch in the morning. Snow was predicted,
but not because of anything we did.

Could be Worse

We could have other people’s thoughts in our heads.
Someone could have spoken to the police about us.

There could be an underground missile silo,
and not an empty lot, at the end of our street.

The neighbor’s dog could be a man-eating tiger,
and the bluish clouds that blew in last night

could contain remnants of Zyklon B.
We could never have met, or made love

like giants of modernism on a mattress on the floor,
or read in the instructions deep colors bleed.

Howie Good is the author of numerous chapbooks and two full-length collections: Lovesick (2009) and Heart With a Dirty Windshield (forthcoming from BeWrite Books). contact

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