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| howie good |  | 1. JUST LIKE EDGAR ALLEN POE'S BLUES I found my heart wandering the streets of Baltimore, penniless, raving unintelligibly, dressed in someone else's clothes. It was coming from a funeral, or going to one, and when I omitted to ask whose, it was gone. But, all these years later, mere acquaintances continue to receive letters begging for $10 for the fare home. 2. WAITING FOR INSPIRATION Flat, empty country. The blue smoke of evening. You look down the tracks both ways and then, dismayed, resume pacing, the indistinct shape in the distance only a woman with shaved eyebrows. 3. NAMING NAMES A double-yellow line means one thing when you're driving on this side of the border, but another when you're the passenger, your hands lying uselessly in your lap and the bored children in the back seat foolishly insisting on asking, as the road turns north and then disappears among the barbwire trees, why you named them for people who were dead. | |
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