Two Poems

Life after Death

“Oon,” our two-year-old says, standing on the driveway and pointing up at the sky. He means “moon.” There isn’t one. And in case you haven’t heard, a suicide bomber in the Mideast or Midwest or somewhere detonated a dynamite vest. My heart curls in on itself  – a matter,  presumably, not of character but chemistry. At the first decorous drops of rain, the leaves tremble, raised on a bleak diet of curses and slaps.

An Armed Man Lurks in Ambush

In this country, you can easily become the sort of person you never wanted to be, broken statuary along your path, an armed man lurking in ambush just ahead, schoolgirls whispering behind their hands. At one job interview, I’m asked the last book I read. I have to think a moment. The Big Book of Baby Names. The green envelope I find among the mail contains an invitation to the wedding of people I never met. As usual, I arrive late. “Did I miss anything?”  Only distant stars, as pale and tiny as spider eggs.

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Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Middle of Nowhere (Olivia Eden Publishing) and the forthcoming poetry chapbooks The Complete Absence of Twilight (Mad Hat Press), Echo’s Bones and Danger Falling Debris (Red Bird Chapbooks), and An Armed Man Lurks in Ambush (unbound CONTENT).

Lead image: “After the rain” (via Flickr user tanakawho)