Famous Long Ago

11 Aug 2010

Howie Good

Oh, habitués of the walk-in clinic!
Oh, aficionados of the cockpit voice recorder!

Nothingness isn’t something
you sleep off in a doorway.

The buildings

are full of forgotten vaudevillians
and signs that say EXIT,

and every panhandler demonstrates
the doubtful efficacy of begging.

Light slows to a trickle.
The sun has gone behind a cloud.

Flowers stumble like horse thieves
leaning over the necks of stolen horses.

–

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 18 print and  digital poetry chapbooks and the full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books.