Poet of the Month
Howie Good is Poet of the Month for October 2011
Howie Good
UNDERTOW
by Howie Good
Your hands fall helplessly
to your sides. All the people
you admire are either dead
or secretly sad. You feel
the undertow of everything
that has gone missing.
I should have been there
with you when the little
black flowers broke open.
I should have watched
for children like the sign said.
Your hands fall helplessly
to your sides. All the people
you admire are either dead
or secretly sad. You feel
the undertow of everything
that has gone missing.
I should have been there
with you when the little
black flowers broke open.
I should have watched
for children like the sign said.
THE WILDERNESS
by Howie Good
1
General Grant lit a cigar.
Provisionally alive recruits
attacked across a field
knee-deep in Union dead.
General Grant sat down
on a tree stump and began
to whittle a stick.
2
I saw no dead men
that night
whose pockets
hadnot been turned
inside out.
Beautiful ah,
hold me
while I’m naked.
1
General Grant lit a cigar.
Provisionally alive recruits
attacked across a field
knee-deep in Union dead.
General Grant sat down
on a tree stump and began
to whittle a stick.
2
I saw no dead men
that night
whose pockets
hadnot been turned
inside out.
Beautiful ah,
hold me
while I’m naked.
WHAT DID THE DOCTOR SAY?
by Howie Good
1
Something about Nazis
and interrogations,
the clicked heels
of polished black boots,
and that if my devils leave me,
my angels will take flight, too.
2
Ten years or more
of pills and ashes
and the endless
black windows
of empty streets.
Is it me? Is it?
Or is there really
a bird with a broken
branch for a beak?
1
Something about Nazis
and interrogations,
the clicked heels
of polished black boots,
and that if my devils leave me,
my angels will take flight, too.
2
Ten years or more
of pills and ashes
and the endless
black windows
of empty streets.
Is it me? Is it?
Or is there really
a bird with a broken
branch for a beak?
PAS DE DEUX
by Howie Good
1
The dog hurls himself at the door.
I hope it’s you that he’s run to greet,
but it’s only the UPS man.
2
I can tell from your face
just what you want me to say.
You want me to say
you look good in the dress.
OK.. . But you’d look better
with no clothes on at all.
1
The dog hurls himself at the door.
I hope it’s you that he’s run to greet,
but it’s only the UPS man.
2
I can tell from your face
just what you want me to say.
You want me to say
you look good in the dress.
OK.. . But you’d look better
with no clothes on at all.
SUICIDAL & DIMLY LIT
by Howie Good
whom pain has brought to despair
but not yet to death
boulders a tree stump
room after room of covered mirrors
if you’re going through hell
keep going
Howie Good is a journalism professor at SUNYNew Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collection Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWriteBooks, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011). His poems also appear in numerous print and online journals as well as several poetry chapbooks.
whom pain has brought to despair
but not yet to death
boulders a tree stump
room after room of covered mirrors
if you’re going through hell
keep going
Howie Good is a journalism professor at SUNYNew Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collection Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWriteBooks, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011). His poems also appear in numerous print and online journals as well as several poetry chapbooks.
