Howie Good


PILOTS CALLED THEM FLYING COFFINS

My heart started going like an antiaircraft gun, a spy caught leaving coded messages. Dusk seemed to fall by 2 p.m. Reporters interviewed mothers with dead children in their arms. The wind from the heights acquired a touch of red. Taxis ran on charcoal gas. Look out the window, the caller said. Summer is over.

STACKED COFFINS

1
On the hour,
assistants gave

schoolchildren
tours of the silent

woods,

the leaves bullet-
shredded and prone

to melancholy.

I hoped I wasn’t
where I thought I was.

2
Chandelier flares,
their fall slowed

by parachutes,
light up the ashes.

The gray car
with the gray men

comes almost
every day.

3
Clear skies
and a bomber’s

moon.

We look at one another
with the mute despair

that has become
a kind of greeting.



Howie Good is the author a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, as well as 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently, Hello, Darkness, available from Deadly Chaps.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page