Howie Good

Wintry Mix

A pair of cardinals—
daubs of red
conspicuously applied
to a corpse.

Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.

Howie Good

Snow Day

Small white envelopes
blowing all about,
some torn open
and already empty,
but others with invitations
to a children’s party
forever sealed inside.

Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.

Howie Good

Caution! Poet at Work

I have spent many an hour
looking out my back door,
waiting for something to happen,

but nothing that would ever
be considered a police matter,
nothing even faintly criminal,

just for the best words to appear
like pigeons strutting into view
wearing tiny cowboy hats.

Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.

Pushcart Nominee 2019

Howie Good

The Last Voyage

Our 93-year-old dad, without his hearing aids
or even his three-pronged cane, still managed
somehow to give everyone the slip, sneaking off
to Monte Carlo Night down in the cellar
of a dream factory, where he coolly turned over
his hole card and won $400, after which
he started back upstairs, but on the way,
and despite struggling for breath, charmed
a roller derby queen on a royal visit out of her skates,
so instead of ever returning to his rooms
at the assisted living got on a ship they say
was built in the same shipyard as the Titanic.

Howie Good‘s most recent book is Stick Figure Opera from Cajun Mutt Press.

Howie Good

The Last Voyage

Our 93-year-old dad, without his hearing aids
or even his three-pronged cane, still managed
somehow to give everyone the slip, sneaking off
to Monte Carlo Night down in the cellar
of a dream factory, where he coolly turned over
his hole card and won $400, after which
he started back upstairs, but on the way,
and despite struggling for breath, charmed
a roller derby queen on a royal visit out of her skates,
so instead of ever returning to his rooms
at the assisted living got on a ship they say
was built in the same shipyard as the Titanic.

Howie Good‘s most recent book is Stick Figure Opera from Cajun Mutt Press.

Howie Good

Haters, Inc.

Any one of us is every one of us,
if you get what I mean, the same formula,

the same diagram sketched on a napkin,
only we don’t much act like it,

our ranks filled out with haters,
coming to shoot strangers in the face,

burn churches to the ground,
laugh and cheer when a car is driven

at high speed into a crowd,
and not for no reason, but because

the sky over there is hot and dark,
and the darkness is incurable.

Howie Good is the author of three recent collections, I‘m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books, The Titanic Sails at Dawn from Alien Buddha Press, and What It Is and How to Use It from Grey Book Press.

Howie Good

How to Prepare for Heartbreak

Summoning up
a kind of rage,
stubbornly walk,
or even crawl,
across a frozen sea
and then pass
through a hole in a fence,
on the other side
of which it’s dusk,
and maybe always is,
no people anywhere,
just stubble fields
and a black dog
with a red tongue.

Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government shutdown.