Two Poems
The Heart Breaks Down Like A Mechanical Device
The repairman says mice have chewed through the wires.
Thank you, I say--to the mice. Maybe now I can think
without being interrupted. But first I must do something
about the Styrofoam peanuts scattered all over the floor,
and then there’s the fire to strum and the Bureau of
Weights and Measures to contact. My wife won’t be any
help. She’s hiding in our bedroom, embarrassed that we
have grown children. I pat my pockets as if searching for
cigarettes, or, if not cigarettes, symptoms. One side of
me is cold and dark; the other side, cold and bright. I
exchange melancholy glances with the deer head on the
wall. The repairman says he’ll be back. Quiet, I say, the
baby’s sleeping.
Looking For Work, Week Five
"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.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of eight poetry chapbooks, including Police and Questions from Right Hand Pointing (2008), Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks, The Torturer’s Horse (2009) from Recycled Karma Press, and Love Is a UFO (2009) from Pudding House. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry, Lovesick, is forthcoming from The Poetry Press of Press Americana.