five poems

by Howie Good

Falling in Love on Our First Date

The windows rattled though the bombs were falling half a world away. Everything was connected to everything. I had just started to realize the ugly hidden implications. “Is that your” – I didn’t know what to call it – “gizmo?” There was sudden panic at the dance party. If God was keeping watch, he had attention deficit disorder. A clamor of wings shook the air. The crows drew strength from the shared ideology of the flock. I swore then that I would be your scarecrow.

Or Something

My dad asked if he had ever been married. Dead leaves swirled around me. The nursing home looked like it might originally have been a Pizza Hut or something. We all chipped in to pay for his care. I chipped in the least. Everyone I encountered who wasn’t talking on a cell phone was texting on one. When you carry a phone, you’re carrying around pieces of Africa. It’s there the metals used in phones are mined (often by children!). Come evening, I’m back where I started, doom-scrolling while onetime cities of the future sink further into the mud.

Surviving

They call us “survivors.” We have survived the worst our bodies could inflict on us. But surviving isn’t equivalent to living. I still feel a crushing pressure where death squatted on my chest. Some survivors join support groups – each particular type of cancer seems to have its own – to help them over the the horror of their diagnosis or the ongoing trauma of their treatment. A positive attitude is believed crucial to survival. It’s a bit like the United States during the Vietnam War. The one who tires first, loses. I approach the future on foot. Flames and smoke shoot up into the sky, as if from the chimneys of crematoria, the air just barely breathable, thick with ashes and shadowy ancestral memories.

Oxy

The oxycodone I took keeps forcing me to close my eyes. In fact, I may have nodded off for a couple of minutes. Everyone has self-myths that need constant propping up. Strapped in the electric chair, Ethel Rosenberg was torched three times with high-voltage shocks. You can’t trust technology to fix the issues that technology itself contributed to creating. When prison officials started to lift her out of the chair, they discovered that her heart was still beating and had to strap her back in. Believers will tell you God has his reasons but can’t tell you what those are.

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter

When my eyes adjusted to the gloom – and who isn’t exhausted by the effort that requires? – there was something depressingly familiar about the place. She asked my last name and date of birth and then double-checked the answers against the paper bracelet on my wrist. It was as if I had somehow survived an extinction-level event, only to be dragged from my car by unemployed autoworkers and beaten into a coma for driving a Japanese import. Ghost. Hangman. The names of games we used to play as kids while waiting for the rain to stop or the school bus to come or our normal daily suffering to be avenged.

Photo of Howie Good

BIO: Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose poetry collections include The Dark and Akimbo, are available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. Sacred Parasite is scheduled to publish his newest collection, Dead Heroes, in 2026.