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). He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.------------
HOTEL OF DREAMS
The sign outside said, You Are Requested to Close Your Eyes. When I opened them again, Baudelaire, dying of syphilis, the so-called “French disease,” was wearing oversized sunglasses in an attempt to disguise his condition. I went to the window. What may have been a city composed entirely of radiant dust glowed in the distance. I felt someone close behind me. “By three things is the world sustained,” Baudelaire whispered, but could only remember the first two. Ten minutes passed with us just standing there. Night seldom started on time.
MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS
A man,
about my age,
on the up escalator
clutches
a bright yellow
plastic bag
to his chest.
The bag says
infinity shoes
right on it.
Everyone’s
head contains
all sorts
of secret
hiding places.
I took a pill
that may cause
drowsiness.
In infinity shoes,
you could,
theoretically,
walk forever.
THE ENIGMATIC MANIFESTO OF ANDRÉ BRETON
Why force a giraffe into a flower pot? the newspapermen shouted. You wouldn’t answer all at once, but sailed out the window to America. The sun had big feet, big hands, dirty nails. Your mistress felt conspicuously abandoned, like a tractor left standing in a field. Closing your eyes for no particular reason, you entered your darkest period, a vase of buttercups brightening the room.
HOW RUDE
Sartre’s last words were, I failed. It feels as if something even more terrible is about to happen. The cadaver dog used to like its job. Now, on most days, yet another woman fills her pockets with cigarettes and pills to keep from floating back up to the surface. The pale, wretched clothes of her children flap on the clothesline. Jesus wipes the dribble from the baby’s chin. The laughter of the angels verges on rudeness.