JUST LIKE EDGAR ALLAN POE'S BLUES
I found my heart wandering
the streets of Baltimore,
penniless,
raving unintelligibly,
dressed in someone else’s clothes.
It was coming from a funeral,
or going to one,
and when I omitted to ask whose,
it was gone.
But, all these years later,
mere acquaintances
continue to receive letters
begging for $10 for the fare home.
SONGS WITHOUT WORDS
1
The clock
stretches out
both hands
toward us.
Fingerless hands.
2
She missed
class a lot
that semester.
I tried to talk
to her once
about it.
She listened
quietly,
like a dark
window.
3
Her name was
Staci Love.
Love – to feel
tender affection
for somebody
or for something.
I looked it up.
4
She had begun
to smell by the time
they found her,
and later I heard
it was self-starvation,
machinery on fire,
an irregular heartbeat
under beaten gold.
5
The clock deserted her,
and ever since,
it isn’t late,
but it feels it.
WHERE I’M FROM
I came straight from work
to meet them on the corner,
but, of course,
they had already become
fine particles of smoke.
While I waited, I listened to music
for barbed wire and accordion.
The short days of winter
had sneaked up on us,
the sky like a fogged mirror,
the frozen puddles like pale bruises.
I stood there for what seemed a lifetime,
naked by then and shivering
and with my hands raised
in the air, an unqualified witness
to an unspecified event.
-
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 11 poetry chapbooks, including Still Life with Firearms (2009) from Right Hand Pointing, Visiting the Dead (2009) from Flutter Press, and My Heart Draws a Rough Map (2009) from The Blue Hour Press. He has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and five times for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry, Lovesick, was released in 2009 by Press Americana. He is co-editor of the online literary journal Left Hand Waving.
