howie good

Face Down In History

Then the gypsies abandoned their camp
and the stars sank down to candles.
All I could see was what could be
surmised from circumstance,
a dancing bear with a head scarf
and one gold earring climbing into a cab.
I was never so young again.
The banished Polish princess
who shared her orange
spit the seeds out on the floor.
She said rule number one was simple,
like the valley between her breasts.
There was no rule number two.

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

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.

Lovesick

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of eight poetry chapbooks, including Police and Questions (2008) from Right Hand Pointing, Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks, The Torturer's Horse (2009) from Recycled Karma Press, and Love Is a UFO (2009) from Pudding House. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net anthology. Lovesick is his first full-length book of poetry.