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Howie Good

Howie Good a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Dark Specks in a Blue Sky from Another New Calligraphy (#ANC030 Summer/Fall 2015).

He is also the author of numerous chapbooks, including Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing, The Devil’s Fuzzy Slippers from Flutter Press and Personal Myths from Writing Knights Press. He has two other chapbooks available: Fog Area from Dog on a Chain Press and The Death of Me from Pig Ear Press. 

"How to be happy" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Origami Poems Project, December 2013

Contact Howie at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  


  Howie's Origami micro-chapbooks & selected poems are available below. Click on the chapbook titles to open as a printable PDF.  Activate the poem selection by also clicking on the title.  The poem itself will open as a drop down.

Origami Micro-chapbook

Selected Poems

When it Rains

 

Cover: Natural Falling Rain Drops
http://wallpaperose.com
 

{mooblock=Stanzas 1, 2, 3}

1
Rain on the way,
a sound no letters can spell.

2
I was watching it
and thinking,
The most expensive work of art ever,
cast in platinum  
and encased in diamonds.


3
I stared miserably
at mom’s grave.

For god’s sake,
why put it there,
in the rain?
Howie Good © 2015

{/mooblock}

Come Evening

 

Cover Photo: amzzz123
Deviantart: the web

{mooblock=The Mirror in the Mirror}

Can’t quite get things in focus? Give a stranger a smile, as if all things were curable with tenderness. There are people I know who don’t know the stars are visible. Seeing is a neglected enterprise. The six o’clock news consists mostly of dogs being hit by cars. A window covered with raindrops interests me more.
Press any button to continue.

Howie Good © 2014

{/mooblock}

Obscure Signs of Progress

 

{mooblock=How To Be Happy}

I can remember teaching you your colors – further proof, if anyone needs it, of the inutility of memory.  We were all easier to love back then, before silence became the main means of communication.  I glance over at you. You’re still in your work clothes, the college dropout, dried teardrops of paint on your chin. One of your younger sisters calls us in her childish voice to come in for dinner, but we sit another little while on the porch in the growing dark, watching, as if by secret agreement, the drifting green sparks of the fireflies.
Howie Good © 2013
Nominated for Pushcart Prize by OPP

{/mooblock}

After Aurora

 
Collage by Jan Keough

{mooblock=The Raindrop Effect}

I stare down at the clouds in the puddle. I’m thinking it’s easier to buy a gun around here than find a job. Darlene says her name means “little darling.” A cold gray light falls across her face, the last task of evening. I can’t remember what I did when this happened before. Mine must mean something, too, I say. The trees shake their shaggy heads as if they disagree. I’m glad a canine can be a dog or tooth. I’m hoping it’s whichever I say it is.
Howie Good © 2012

{/mooblock}

Nervous Disorder

 

{mooblock=Ward 6}

I wasn’t there. What’s so difficult to grasp? Lack of faith intensified the effect. The same young nurse woke me every fifteen minutes to check my vitals, the flowers on the wallpaper opening just a crack. I looked away. The sun was coming up, naked and shivering. A burning freight train crawled endlessly through the background. There are probably better words to describe it, but I have been broken and mended and broken again.
Howie Good © 2012

{/mooblock}