THRENODY (FOR THE VICTIMS OF HIROSHIMA)

by Howie Good

It’s years later,
but still August,

the sky erupting
in abrupt reds
& parsimonious purples

like God’s own
fiery flesh,

until nowhere
is everywhere,

& our faces are flecked
with sharp grains
of martyrs’ bones.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

by Howie Good

Image credit: monamakela / 123RF Stock Photo

“Boon,” our two-year-old says,
standing on the driveway
and pointing up at the sky.

He means “moon.” There isn’t one.

And in case you haven’t heard,
a suicide bomber in the Mideast
or Midwest or somewhere
detonated a dynamite vest.

My heart curls in on itself –
a matter, everyone just assumes,
not of character but chemistry.

At the first decorous drops of rain,
the leaves tremble, as if raised
on a bleak diet of curses and slaps.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com. 

THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

by Howie Good

 Image source: archaeology & arts

I waved a dollar
out the window.
We brushed hands
as he took it.

Thank you,
he said.
I said nothing,

just rolled
my window up
and waited

with renewed
impatience
for the light
to change.

You know
how it is,

I couldn’t help
but doubt,
at least a little,

the crudely
lettered sign
he held.

Then I remembered
that cavemen
depicted
running animals
by giving them
eight legs.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

AFTER THE BOMBING

by Howie Good

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

Every bush strung
with shreds of bloodstained light,
there’s so much still to suffer,

an Atlantic of emptiness,
greasy & barely moving,
a slow-creeping blue creation,

like the drone of flies
from an adjoining world.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

GLOBAL WARMING

by Howie Good

   
               

“Everything
I leave
behind,”

a dying
Thoreau
instructed,

“is to be
 burned.”

Birds ignite
in mid-air.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

VALENTINE

by Howie Good

Image source: appszoom

We share one long border.
When she breathes in,
I must breathe out.

There may be arguments
against this, or at least

against us attempting
to build a kingdom
out of blowing rain.

What began in regicide
continues somehow

in majesty & the small,
impossibly bright light
of her drowned candle.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

AFTER THE MASSACRE

by Howie Good

Photograph by Phil Armitage

1
January has been mostly absent. No need to look online for what it means. I already know what it means. It means there’s a girl at the door collecting for cancer. Alcohol intensifies the effect. Theology, too. Whoever doesn’t love incongruity doesn’t love me. The clock raises its penciled-in eyebrows. I don’t talk in my sleep; I scream.

2
I wake up to snow drifting down, dry and brittle, like the ashes of murdered six-year-olds. Hey! No problem! the weather girl assures everyone. I have become someone I never wanted to be, the way songs have become their own jingles. Hear it? The cold, dark howls of women giving birth to monsters in attics.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

MARS

by Howie Good

The god of carnage has grown

a balding man’s stringy ponytail.

Red, he says, means danger.

He shrugs his cruelly thin shoulders.

A tractor stands abandoned

in a field of what looks from here

like black puddles of blood.

The future will burn a full 40 days.

We will walk beside our coffins.

Starvelings will stare out

from behind barbed wire.

Mothers will shriek. There will be

nice grass in the cemetery.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

AFTER READING THE HEADLINES

by Howie Good

Image source: Julia's Journical

I went
along the road.
Gravediggers
followed.
They followed
everywhere,

eavesdropping
on painful
memories

being
described
in hushed
tones.

Suddenly
the sun set.
The red
came off
on my hands.

Nobody said,
How sad.

Night was
a dark room.
The stars
were the holes
in the ceiling.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.

YPRES

by Howie Good                            
                                      
                                            for Sarah M. & Tom C.

Tyne Cot cemetery on the Ypres Salient, Belgium.

Despite
a cold
misty rain

poplars
stand
at attention

as

we wander
jet-lagged

down rows
& rows
of gravestones

40,000
stubby
white teeth

bared


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 Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Love Dagger from Right Hand Pointing, To Shadowy Blue from Gold Wake Press and Love in a Time of Paranoia from Diamond Point Press.