My Father, Kafka

By Howie Good
100 words

Here’s an old photo of my father oddly alone on a city street, he’s as slim as a novella and dark as a gypsy prince, he looks like Kafka, thick, black hair slicked back and comet-bright eyes, the wariness of someone suddenly summoned to appear at such and such a time at such and such a place, the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, and he’s on his way there now, hands thrust deep in his pockets as if to hide certain deformities, but, of course, this is not K., and that is not Prague behind him, and I am not born.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, including the e-book, Police and Questions (Right Hand Pointing, 2008), available free at Right Hand Pointing.