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Vol XVI: Disaster ModeHowie Good |
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 19 previous print and digital poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, Lovesick, published by Press Americana. His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books. 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.
JUMP2CONTENTS
3: MEDITATION ON A CANDLE FLAME
7: CHAGALLESQUE
10: RED & GOLD
ON A COUNTRY ROAD
Coming around the curve
by the farm pond
where someone once drowned,
I startle what’s squatting
over a red stain of road kill,
a buzzard that survives
on others’ blunders
and, with the slow swirl
of a voluminous black cape,
cumbersomely rises,
a fallen angel passing
through the airport scanner
in dark glasses no problem.
DRESSING IN THE DARK
1
I am a man of no importance,
an empty sleeve
pinned to a shoulder.
2
Dusk.
On my knees in the garden
as if praying.
While the peonies
fluff their ruffled cuffs.
3
It’s there every morning,
like a shadow
that carefully knocks
snow from its boots
before coming inside.
MEDITATION ON A CANDLE FLAME
Best sometimes to ignore
what’s going on in my head
the joyful pops of static
and step off the curb
with the thousands who breathe
through paper face masks
the U-boats so close to shore
a chorus girl in a Miami penthouse
could see men die in flaming oil
STRESS FRACTURE
My biography
consists
of three lines.
The day
will come
when I beg
to ride.
One being
the frayed line
of the horizon.
These boxes
are heavy.
THE INCANDESCENT EUPHEMISM
In my palm
a little yellow pill
like a pinhole
of light,
something
to bear away
the black
butterfly,
the shadow
sloppily licking
a spoon.
AUGUST 6, 1945
Birds igniting
in midair.
Women
whose skin
hangs
from them
like a kimono.
Would it not
be wondrous
for this whole
nation to be
destroyed
like a beautiful
flower?
CHAGALLESQUE
Horizontal violence
doesn’t mean
what you would
think it means.
I feel like giving
everyone the finger.
Nothing a flock
of green rabbis
flying in mini-vans
over the village
wouldn’t fix.
DISASTER MODE
I was remembering the fire the mad housepainter set. One man gasped at the verisimilitude of the flames. Another wept, though in relief or grief I couldn’t say. The crowd kept growing. Punches were thrown, children trampled, everyone fighting for a better view of the blackened corpses, the mounds of rubble. The thing I thought was about to happen might yet. I rush off to warn the barren woman who dwells in the firelight as a mother of four.
fragments of my ruin
1
Heart like a boarded-up building.
What’s wrong with me?
Stopped at a light in a bad part of town.
A billboard on the brick wall
says, Everybody Sees Billboards.
2
Half a tranq. That’s life.
Take as needed.
Like the black veil
of the beekeeper’s hat.
3
The wood dreams
of becoming fire,
the fire dreams
of becoming light.
I use her name
as my password.
4
Relics of saints crumble
when light touches them.
The shopping cart man
steers slowly up the street.
into the catastrophic sun.
RED & GOLD
I kiss the back
of her bare
shoulder.
Things shine
as if we swindled
the sun
out of its gold.
The gallop
of a thousand
horses
shakes red
petals down
upon
our bed.