3 Poems by Howie Good
IN A LONELY PLACE
The heart is breathing
all on its own,
like a town so small
it doesn’t have a priest,
the insects and birds
just loud enough
for us to believe
they might still exist.
"loneliness" (photo by Flickr user LunaDiRimmel)
* * *
(BELATED) ELEGY FOR BRAUTIGAN
A woman from Tacoma
screams your name
while having drunken sex
with a stranger.
The stolen painting hangs
in the house next door.
Trout dapple the Pacific Northwest
like the silver sound
of Chekov’s phone ringing.
It’s a little early to think about dinner.
The stuff your mother threw out
would be worth a lot of money now.
"Antiques" (photo by Flickr user Luiz Felipe Castro)
* * *
HEART TROUBLE
1
He dialed 911. The war had just started. Bees fed on the golden face of a sunflower in a city
twelve-thousand miles away. Pilots called them Flying Coffins.
2
His heart started going like an antiaircraft gun, a spy caught leaving coded messages. Dusk
seemed to fall by 2 p.m. Reporters interviewed mothers with dead children in their arms. The
wind from the heights acquired a touch of red. Look out the window, the caller said, summer is
over.
3
The purpose of catastrophe apartments eluded him. Taxis ran on charcoal gas. He never
requested a different ending for the old people wrapped in rags.
"Sunflowers at Sunset" (photo by Flickr user Stuck in Customs)
–
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, and 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks. He has been nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net anthology. He is co-editor of the online literary journal Left Hand Waving. He blogs at apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com.
Comments
By Olga Wolstenholme on August 20th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
I thought you didn’t do poetry around these parts.
Not that I’m complaining or anything. Howie Good is a great place to start if you’re going to break rules.
By Laura Roberts on August 21st, 2010 at 8:27 am
We caved in to the pressure of a few exceedingly awesome poetry submissions. There’s a new poetry submission section in our Submishmash form now, too.
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