Everyday Mysteries

I was almost entirely through the movie on Netflix before I realized I had seen it already. Beings that never were had crawled out of the sewers to feed on human flesh. By then I had been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. I was otherwise unstressed when I pulled up to the drive- thru window. A heavy-set woman in a World War II-style overseas cap peered out. I handed her a ten and she handed me a box of donuts. "Have a nice day, Hon," she said with a smile, exposing a dark gap where a couple of her bottom teeth should have been. I felt a weird kind of kinship, like we were mutineers who had been marooned on a remote desert island together. The sun was in my eyes the whole way home.

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Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from Thoughtcrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.