that summer

That Summer

The roof burned continuously.
I passed long hours learning

the names of various shades of blue –
Air Force blue, cornflower blue,

Persian blue, periwinkle.
Night came early where I lived

with my mother and three brothers
and no one to read to me to sleep,

though the herd of clouds grazing
at the end of the street would always

lift their big, shaggy heads to listen.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of nine poetry chapbooks, including Police and Questions from Right Hand Pointing (2008), Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks, and Visiting the Dead (2009) from Flutter Press. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry, Lovesick, is forthcoming from The Poetry Press of Press Americana.