Elementary Blues by Howie Good
Around midnight I had finally given up trying to turn the stale words and phrases on the screen of my laptop into a scrap of poetry, and instead had retreated to our old green couch and started fingerpicking my way through a song that despite my questionable musicianship you would have recognized if you had still been awake as something popular back when we were young and whole and unable to conceive that days, weeks, months, years might ever resemble rough wooden crosses on a bald hill, a dying angel crying out under gloomy skies on each one.
Howie Good is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.