Hanoch Guy
Hanoch Guy, Ph.D., Ed.D., spent his childhood and youth in Israel surrounded by citrus orchards, watermelon fields and invading sand dunes. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch is emeritus professor of Jewish and Hebrew literature at Temple University. He mentored and taught poetry at the Musehouse center in Philadelphia. Hanoch has published poetry extensively in the US, Greece, Israel and the UK in Genre, Poetry Newsletter, Tracks, the International Journal of Genocide Studies, Poetry Motel, Visions International, and Voices Israel. He has won awards for Poetica and Mad Poets Society and Phila.poets, and Better than Starbuck haiku. He is the author of ten poetry collections. His eleventh poetry book was published by Kelsay books.
The following work is Copyright © 2022, and owned by Hanoch Guy and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Don’t make trouble
Start walking early.
Brown waves already wrap.
Traffic noises are deafening.
Wear earplugs.
Go through streets full of shouting vendors.
Buy at least one dripping fat cheese steak.
Dress as a pirate, as an alien.
Give the preacher on the corner
the good beating he expects.
Be generous with blessings
on the great river banks.
Rally for non-violence.
Fall into an open pit.
Practice cursing in a foreign language.
Count the words loudly in a conversation.
No smoking sign: light a cigar.
Buy a ticket to New Jersey.
Get off on the first stop.
Demand a refund.
Walk into a parking lot,
Ask for the rate for parking yourself for a night.
Insist on staying for free.
Collect tolls on a tiny country bridge.
Roll down the street nude.
Go on a march for strange poets’ rights.
Paint a police station pink.
Remember: bad credit happens to good people.
Order a pizza, demonstrate against junk food.
Wear a watch showing New Zealand time.
Go into the IRS office
and keep asking why?
Send an email to all your representatives
declaring your house a tax exempt haven.
Hire a boat, insist the boat man
light a candle at your head,
let you float downstream
Play the mandolin badly at a funeral home.
Don’t get tempted by a two-for-one offer.
Jump in an open rainbow parachute
with purple straps.
Always treat everyone, including yourself,
as if they are going to die by midnight.
Invest in a solid future.
Donate your body to plastination.
Don’t make trouble.
Howie Good
Howie Good’s latest poetry book is The Horse Were Beautiful (2022), available from Grey Book Press. Redhawk Publications is publishing his collection, Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems, later this year.
The following work is Copyright © 2022, and owned by Howie Good and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Rumored Whereabouts
There was nothing I could do. I was under a car, sheltering from the debris raining down, bricks and glass and chunks of concrete. Right then I resolved to henceforth be like the unruly drunks you read about who are unaffected when tasered by a cop – even when tasered again and again. In the meantime, the boat in the nearby slip was on fire. Smoke engulfed my head. I swear I could hear a phone bot saying, “All our representatives are resisting other customers at this time.”
&
The EMT in the ambulance with me had mint green hair. She was trying frantically to undo some knots in the IV tubing. A little voice in my head said, “What have you learned, and whom have you helped?” The LSD I’d taken earlier was lasting longer than expected. It was as if I’d stepped through my eyelids. But the potato chip really did look like Elvis.
&
A man in Warrenton, Missouri, posted a video of himself licking deodorant sticks at the Walmart and asking, “Who’s a coward now?” I was like yes, yes, yes, I want to do that. I only very rarely experience such sudden enthusiasms. And whose fault is that? Not mine, not when the Wampanoag, the tribe that helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter in Plymouth, still regret it 400 years later.
