1
One
moment
he was

leaning
on a wall.
The next

he was
wondering
why

a wall,
and not

a tree.

2
He always introduced her
only by her first name.

Similarly, in the park,
she received shy glances

from the statues
of lesser known heroes.

3
Is suicide a solution?
inquired the fly,
goose-stepping
through the burning ruins
of a French village.

4
He used a camera
like a typewriter,
the page in front of him
covered with blood.

5
They fell asleep side by side
on a bed of curled pencil shavings.
For long moments at a time,
the bicycle wheel ceased to stammer.

6
You see her sometimes
on the boulevard

of strip malls
and chain motels

dressed all in black
like a crow

or a sad country.

7
The troops burst from the trenches.
The audience applauded,
her last name of no concern to anyone.

TAGS: Half-Life, Howie Good, poets

HOWIE GOOD, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 12 poetry chapbooks, including most recently My Heart Draws a Rough Map from The Blue Hour Press, and Ghosts of Breath from Bedouin Books. 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.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 12:43 am and is filed under Poem, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.