HOWIE GOOD

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of
New York at New Paltz, is the author of 10 poetry chapbooks,
including Visiting the Dead (2009) from Flutter Press. He has also
been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and three times
for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of
poetry, Lovesick, has just been published by Press Americana.

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Love Finds You Like A Posse In Bulletproof Vests

A new teller at the drive-
through window,

she wants proof
you're who you are,

a stream of despondent electrons,
light of the same crumbly consistency

as the snowflakes melting
in the lonely blackness

of a Goth girl's hair.






The Reference Librarian of Arcane Griefs

Who knows when
she went down

to the evening dimness
of the stacks,

but now she stands
with her flabby back to us,

slowly turning the pages
of a long treatise

on melancholy
and quietly weeping.

Anyone would think
it was she herself

who misshelved
the books we needed.

What about the burning curtains?
I want to ask her. And what

about the parking lot filled
with abandoned babies?

She doesn't look up,
but if she did,

she might see planes
like silver crucifixes

and a few tiny gray clouds
scattered like the debris

of some distant confusion.






Autumn Breeze

One brown shoe
on the side of the road

a foot still in it
tapping






Love Note On Cheap Paper

Every day has become
something like crossing

the time zones of hell,
a feeling of being sullenly

present in the world,
and even then by proxy,

when all I only want to see
is what might be seen

if my heart were a lantern:
a red tree, blue horses, you.

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