The Shape of Things to Come

by Howie Good

Joan of Arc is led to a window booth at the Time to Eat Diner, still blind from a dazzling vision of angels flying in V-formation like a squadron of geese. Moments later, Jesus slides onto the seat across the table from her. All he is wearing is a kind of adult diaper. The waitress arrives to take their drink order. Late-stage capitalism has achieved something Hitler never could: Yiddish has disappeared as a living language with scarcely a protest being registered. The mom at the next table asks her toddler what this shape is called.

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Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry books, The Dark and Akimbo, are available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.