MISANTHROPY

by Howie Good

Birds scuff for dark crumbs
under the sidewalk tables.

A police spy in the corner
notes the time. Everywhere

there are sons of bitches.
In a dingy rooming house

boarders come and go unseen
except for the burnt matches

they drop in the hall.

LEFT RIGHT LEFT

by Howie Good

You’re already halfway home or more when you remember
you forgot the baby in a shopping cart in the vast parking
lot. Oh, they’ll wail, how could you? And saying your
brain was temporarily deprived of oxygen isn’t a good
answer. So, of course, you look with newfound seriousness
for a place to turn around, but there is none, only the
thud of night smashing into your windshield. All you can
do now is drive faster and faster through the sirens and
confusion, the hairless face of the cretinous moon beaming
over your left – no, your right – no, your left –
shoulder.

LAP DANCE

by Howie Good

Last night I went to a movie at the Upstate,
Marisa Tomei was in it, she played an aging stripper,

but without the cellulite and droopy ass,
who worked at a club in Jersey called Cheeks,

black walls, myopic lighting, loud music,
the graveyard of empires, where a lap dance

in the VIP Room cost you 60 bucks
and the vinyl siding salesmen from Trenton

got hard as she gyrated on stage in a G-string,
her eyes strangely dead, the boarded-up windows

of a once-prosperous downtown appliance store,
I wanted to tell her, Oh, Marisa, don’t be sad,

you’re beautiful, instead the guy sitting
behind me kept crossing and uncrossing his legs

and kicking the back of my seat.

PUMP AND LADDER

by Howie Good

My grandfather had a bad heart.
The doctors warned him

about smoking a pack a day
and drinking slivovitz,

the plum brandy that tastes
like nail polish remover smells,

but he didn’t listen.

One day he collapsed in the street.
Someone screamed.

Someone else ran to the firehouse for help.
A fireman who had been shining

a fire truck, a pump and ladder, ran out.
My grandfather looked dead.

He wasn’t moving at all.
He wasn’t even moaning.

The fireman gave him mouth-to-mouth.
People later said it was lucky

he collapsed right outside a firehouse.
Otherwise, they said, he wouldn’t be here.

Then my grandmother got sick and died,
and my parents got old themselves.

They put my grandfather into a nursing home.
He would quietly unzip and pee in the hall.


*a review of Howie's new chapbook:
http://smallpressreviews.blogspot.com/2008/12/tomorrowland.html

LOOKING FOR WORK, WEEK 5

by Howie Good

“You aren’t quite right for us,” he says.

He isn’t looking at me when he says it.
He’s looking at the screen of his cell phone.

Where to now?
It’s a hot day, and it promises to get hotter.

I start walking.
The folder tucked under my arm
might as well be empty for all the good
the papers inside have done me.

A woman up ahead
has a lovely, heart-shaped ass.

I can feel the sweat break out on my back.
I’m not sure this is the right direction.
My legs ache.
There’s a metallic taste in my mouth

I tell myself this is the right direction.
I breathe in, I breathe out.

Etc. and so on.


*check out Howie's new chapbook:
http://achilleschapbook.blogspot.com/2008/11/howie-good-tomorrowland.html