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.

Howie Good

The Colonel of the Dead

after flexing
his cramped fingers,

records your name
in black ink
on black paper,

then lies back
with a weary sigh
on a sun chair,

pink high tops
crossed at the ankles.
 
Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.

Howie Good

October Trees

I see them out my window,
grinning, angelic,
committed to the outrageous thing,
to be alive in spaces
that are designed to kill them.

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

Howie Good

The Osprey

Coming
out of the sun,

it passes
with steady,
languid
wingbeats
over the marsh,

clutching
in its claws
a fish

that must be
astonished
to be flying.

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