January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
The Day a Rabbit Fell Out of a Tree
In Lot 30,
next to the Corn Lot,
I started shooting parrots
out of a eucalyptus.
I hit one on my first shot–
it crashed
through the branches
and thudded
head first on the ground.
Then, behind me,
I heard a flapping of wings
and turned around quickly
only to see a rabbit
fall out of another tree
and thump listlessly upon a root
sticking up from the base of the trunk.
How strange.
Was this a sign?
If I were Roman, Trojan, or Greek,
I am sure I would believe so.
I examined the rabbit.
It was limp and still warm
but there was no blood,
only a long slash
like a talon might make
on its side,
its muscles and ribs exposed.
Now, either a hawk dropped it,
frightened by my shotgun blast,
or Diana was playing with me.
Distant Trees
“I don’t understand why distance
must be measured in nonnegative
numbers.”
The thicker part of the Wood
Has been cut
And becomes thicker still.
“If I face north,
distance to the south
is behind me.”
Every trunk branches
Ten times, and each branch becomes a
tree,
Even though painted with herbicide and
oil.
“Which way to the Hope Ranch?”
“Oh you go back the way you came.
Ten kilometers.”
The Post Maker lied.
The bad wood has returned.
Worse and without trails.
“Yesterday I walked all the way
to the Wood from my ranchhouse: 3
kilometers,
then back again: 6 kilometers in total
(or is that zero since I walked back
on the same azimuth?)
Yesterday I walked to the Wood.
Yesterday I walked back.
Yesterday I walked.
Yesterday.”
I want to return to the Wood,
To the way it was.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
From Pools of Thou
Towers of Babel bubble and lisp
on the surface of the collective
unconscious.
Primeval swamps possess urges
and gaseous ideas worth wagging tonsils
about.
The first stories inspire folk
to scratch their heads, clean their ears,
and build endless variations on a theme.
Mudslinging around the jobs becomes in bad
taste.
A Moses takes two tablets and is called
a doctor of theology in the morning.
Later comes exegesis, born by mezzanines
and crying in the winds.
And by the time the thirteenth floors are
added
science ties tongues into knots.
Astronomy’s gibberish = **+~x8#?
while biochemistry !:!:! with the finest
whine
and most specific grunt.
Struggling to memorize evolution’s book and
verse
and astrology’s articulate map,
the laborers of the construction site give
up
easily for the down of muck
and mire’s simple nursery rhyme
while gods from amebas goose each higher.
When the first I-beam falls, it isn’t
long
before girders, computer chips,
and invisible fields of energy tumble.
The moan of myth and murk tugs
at the confidence of worker As, Bs, Cs
to replace the birth of tomorrow
with the desire for fantasy of sleep.
With pay checks and a stick the residents
of thin air prepare for the backlash
of species hibernation: shape lips and
blow.
Wee
My concern was always for the nobody, the man
who is lost in the shuffle, the man who is common, so ordinary,
that his presence is not even noticed. – Henry Miller
Primal flux feeds eyes to flashing neon
lights,
landmarks, and foot prints from a pool.
The gumballs of young folk lend
themselves
to big bubbles when the flavor is gone.
Parental golf and meat balls
concentrating
on a night on the town bulge in the
cheeks
of regret. Nets set to ensnare anything
current
moving hoist humans behind fishing
trawlers.
The rug pulled out from under feet
defines
itself when each ass flattens on the
earth,
a shot above the head. Somewhere between
a second’s two slashes, solar systems
pass
with the slapstick routines designed to
mimic
the thrills. Under the nose of the serious
ambush,
the metamorphosis drags the chimera
across
waves and particles, always more than groped
for.
Mused
[H]is Muse has whored with many before him. -
Harold Bloom
Along history’s dark street the boys
who beneath a lamp mistake lipstick
for a smile engage in scribbling.
The 21st Century readers
continue
to balance themselves on the edge
of their seats for the girls to explain
how it is they have come to write.
Perhaps it involves a pimp and his harem.
A repressed number of Yeatses throw
themselves across their beds – and raise
their pens red with passion. Which ones
will speak for the neighborhood, their
ages,
a culture? Each calligrapher wakes to
the goodbye note on the bathroom mirror
and his pants rifled through. Even big
shot Shakespeare! Somewhere in the ink
each quill wiggler knows it and worries
when. This penguin attempts to embrace
his echo of the past but she is rolled
over and still smoking. May sisters
and daughters have better luck with love.
Credits include the 2008 Gival Press Poetry
Award for my book-length manuscript “Voyeur;” a first book The
Apple in the Monkey Tree; chapbooks Great
Grandfather, Family Secret, Hunting and
Pecking, and Phoems for Mobile Vices, Rescue Lines;
poems in Rolling Stone, Poetry, Grand Street, Trespass, The
View from Here, New Letters, Pank, Segue, Big Bridge, EOAGH,
Fact-Simile, foam:e, and Confrontation; and essays in
The International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of the
Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning,
Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics Poetry / Literature and
Culture, Fringe, and Journal of
Ecocriticism.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
THE YELLOW PENCIL
No matter how loud I shout, my voice doesn’t carry.
Only in old movies do the lovers escape on an ice floe. The night
supervisor, his face curiously flushed, whispers something I can’t
hear to the new girl working the line in the family pencil factory.
Later, the worn rubber nub of a no. 2 pencil erases what has just
been written.
NOW THAT THE BUFFALO ARE GONE
We were fighting the Indians in Florida. You said a
joke without a punchline isn’t a real joke. Why I always carry an
arrowhead in my pocket, I said. Children passed over the hill, a
coffin covered with wildflowers, but Thoreau only came out when
there was a fire downtown. The tall ships of the China trade
returned empty. It was a sign of something, like a face shaded by a
wide hat.
STILL BURNING
I pass an hour rearranging chunks of the alphabet.
Distant tramping rattles the window. I wave to our mailman. He
doesn’t wave back. The furniture scuttles sideways in any room the
squad enters. They take away the neighbor who mowed his grass at
night. Buildings are still burning. I should think about something
else – island women, naked to the waist, kneeling down to bathe
their wounded eyes in the river of dreams.
REMEMBER THE ALAMO
The farts of a hopped-up Mustang echo down the
street. Sam Houston could use a shot of mescal right about now. His
hand trembles like a courier with urgent news. Under the tent, the
strongman lifting a barbell grunts. He doesn’t wish to discuss
anymore the dissonant modernism of his early work. Agents in belted
raincoats watch the border from nearby doorways. Although the sun
is out, the nine-spotted ladybug crosses undetected.
Howie Good is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, and 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks. With Dale Wisely, he is the co-founder of White Knuckle Press.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Sitting in front of the pharmacy bar, he leans
his weight on the red countertop, one arm slung
over the top of his thigh, the other bumps
the stamp machine that promises to ring; tokens
he’ll use to pay the paper angels singing carols
down at him. Below the florescent light cutting
the tiled floor, the boxes within boxes, the small
thing he feels when the cotton of his hat
sinks down on his ears. He looks to the right, wanting
to see his face in the display case, alongside
the tiny porcelain figurine of a dog –
to be that small, that contained.
Brother Door
There are no hands tallying on the clock;
no train of interlocking gears pushing forth
when your palm slams hard, thrusting splinters
beneath the door to your room.
I gather pieces of glass, of mirror, imagine
your feet, the tiny silver blades in your soles, then look
through the key hole of this door and another and another,
until I can see: the pink of your mouth,
two porcelain birds still on your tongue.
Remember, when we were little, and bathing
together traced mole constellations across our backs?
Tonight, I’ll sleep at your door, rest at you feet.
Island lizards clawing the chipped white walls.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
No more hiding behind horsehair and wool,
thick as thieves. No more scratching obscenities into frosted
windows. No more teeth biting holes into our cheeks, chattering
away in a Morse code, damning the cold. Let us emerge from cabin
fever and pale skin. Let us absorb ultraviolet exaltation and
synthesize vitamin D.
A quick equinox, a simple solstice and we’ll
make a memory of bare foliage, colorless vistas, ice related death.
We’ll meet in a park and together burn our mittens, scorch tinsel
and garland glittering with smug holiday joy, shred furnace filters
and dance around all their flying bits.
Winter, you tried to kill me didn’t you? You
came without warning and brandished a predictable arsenal. Ah, but
your frost is no match for spring’s relentless onslaught of floral
plumage and sweet air, moist as pound cake.
No more. No more knit hats and heavy boots.
No more dead batteries and slick sidewalks. Let’s send microchips,
send satellite dishes spinning into the night. Let’s find reasons
to be lakefront, hillside, streetwise frontiersmen and
petticoat-clad pioneer women.
You are banished. Pack your things and scat.
May your exile be longer than elephant memory. Long and complete.
And while you’re away, we will be picnicking on checkered blankets,
oblivious as trees. We will be searing flesh, fish and mysterious
tubed meat on smoky grills. We’ll be pitching tents and raising
flags and launching rockets from bottles. We’ll be Japanese
gardening and beer gardening and laughing righteously.
So please, enjoy your respite. No more
breathing solids into the thin cosmos, no more zero visibility. Go
away and only come back when I’m ready for you.
