Tag Archives: Howie Good

On this particular Sunday, a screaming crow flew across my path. I had a pilfered loaf of bread under my coat to help feed the starving millions or to melt down into bullets. The pope declared from his window in … Continue reading →

I didn’t even know you were sick until I saw what your oldest posted on your Facebook page – that you had fallen into a coma during cancer treatment and were very near death. For an awful moment, I wrestled … Continue reading →

Detectives in their trademark brown derbies peered in the window. They saw a youngish man standing by a Victrola. He had a handsome but somber face, as if the music on the turntable might be stirring up dark memories and … Continue reading →

I have heard it’s bad luck to wake a student who’s sleeping in class, so I don’t, even though now the student may never know that Salvador Dali sat up on his deathbed and, weak as he was, cursed the … Continue reading →

As if at a secret signal, the streets filled with dancing grannies. The future seemed tragic to me regardless. Squat men with brutal faces lurked in doorways, under lampposts, behind trees. This was before Magritte introduced the notion that charm … Continue reading →

I’m out of seed for the birds, and Jameson’s and firewood for us, and now it’s only a matter of time before I start to let words choose my meaning. Nothing can be repaired or retrieved, nothing, not by tomorrow, … Continue reading →

Press enter to continue, the message on the screen said. I did. The computer couldn’t come out of sleep mode. Where were the ushers wearing white tops and black bottoms, and required to stay the entire performance? What wasn’t already … Continue reading →

I read the old notices on the bulletin board while being forced to wait. “Do you love music?” “The Bible has a way of making life clearer.” “Must leave your information with Lisa in the Math Dept. office.” “Free T-shirts … Continue reading →

Ignore the passers-by and bystanders, the fill line when you pour, fictionalized accounts of the day Christ died. Ignore the possibility of a hard-on that lasts more than four hours. Ignore questions without obvious answers, the house with dead plants … Continue reading →

The light of this candle cups even the plainest of faces with tenderness Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite … Continue reading →

If I lived in Washington, I’d be riding the Metro now, or if I were up in Boston, the cramped and dingy T. In New York even lovers travel underground. But here, though officially fall, one last sunflower flares, the … Continue reading →

1 The paddywagon takes the innocent away. Such scenes of theft and murder! Police shoot first and yell “Throw up your hands” afterwards, while a face in the window just stares blankly. Tears can drown even the strongest swimmer. 2 … Continue reading →

1 The wounded lay where they fell between the trench lines, unretrievable. It was the evening of the first day of three days of rain. “And for the lady?” the white-coated waiter asked. 2 When did “window” become another word … Continue reading →

I sat with the bride’s side as if I belonged there. White petals from a late- blooming cherry tree occasionally floated down. Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick … Continue reading →

I make a cup of my heart, what should not be but is, the cloud shapes like accusations increasingly hard to dispute. A pornomaniac has been nailed to the cross among the agitators and shoplifters. Why take sides when it … Continue reading →

Hear that? A low wailing? Like a tornado of meat flies? I must have signed my name in the wrong place or acquired the wrong kind of expertise. As I drive into town, the glass eye soaks overnight in a … Continue reading →

For example, the broken shade of the kitchen window. The woman who showed us around kept coming down with diseases. She was new, but not young, if you know what I mean. Out back the dogs barked as if comparing … Continue reading →

Eight tired daisies defy narrative convention the site of a former Civil War hospital bathed in the penicillin-resistant colors of multicolored underwater lights blue jays and honeybees skimming our skin the happy rumble of snow plows followed closely by a … Continue reading →

Maybe it’s contagious, maybe it’s raining, maybe a man with a counterfeit limp rolls a suitcase over abandoned railroad tracks, while fog throws flowers of rat’s breath at me, understated white petals and slightly wounded red, maybe the therapeutic hypnotist … Continue reading →

Leave a wake-up call for midnight. The flowers from your dream must be dead-headed, flecks of spittle at the corners of their savage red mouths. Howie Good is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009) and Heart With … Continue reading →

I belly-flop on the hand grenade you bring home Next day it’s a heart in a cooler From then on we say only true things like the green keys of an old manual typewriter Howie Good is the author of … Continue reading →

Why call it fog on the lake? Why not honeybee venom? Why not the numeral five? All things are moving toward becoming one thing like European foreign secretaries on their way to a conference to sell out some small and … Continue reading →

1 A brown halo of smoke hangs over the town. I count what look like bullet holes in the wall. The birds just want to go back to sleep. I follow the fat blonde up the stairs. Use gentle strokes … Continue reading →

The moon is leaking blood. In the big box store, missionaries of the sell-by-date are put to the sword. Hope is an obsolete notion. Hunched against the cold, intelligence operatives monitor the charismatic exploding lion’s dreams, monstrous in their beauty. … Continue reading →