Howie Good


CRYPTIC ENDEARMENTS

My mother’s maiden name,
Sternlicht, translates as starlight.

An octopus has three hearts.
The deep water closed over me.

I rang your doorbell and ran.



PUZZLE PIECES

1

The devil is dancing in the aisle. Or maybe human ignorance makes mysteries where none exist. Someone you never met may have tired at last of waiting around the corner for you with an ax. I only perceive the fiery crackling of bees crawling on the head of a sunflower.

2
An ambulance comes screaming around the corner. Up on the top floor, the fat, out-of-shape detective pretends to be able to tell from my bored answers which crimes I have witnessed and which I have committed. The dead body in the next room keeps forgetting to lie still.

3
Wherever I go, men are fighting over women or loot. The abandoned write their names on scraps of paper and drop them through the bars on the windows. I have the same sudden feeling of unease as I had during previous visits. The greeter nods hello and then resumes applying her black lipstick.

4
The patient in the other bed disappeared during the night, a bit of sadism to satisfy the tabloids. Visitors whispered my name behind their hands. The clock, meanwhile, would momentarily grow large, the blue flowers on the yellow wallpaper opening just a crack.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Inspired Remnants from Red Ceilings Press and The Penalty for Trying from Ten Pages Press.
 
 
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