Scene From a Dream & Good Day For a Landslide
Howie Good

Scene From a Dream
Everything that could emigrate, even the insects, had. “Here!” I shouted, “I’m over here!” as the scene began to fill, little by little, with recognizable details. The old woman finally turned in my direction. It was her but not her, red in the face, eyes clenched shut, mouth deformed by sobs. The gravedigger lifted his head at the commotion before dozing off again, leaning deftly on the end of a shiny new shovel.

Good Day For a Landslide
The worst problem isn’t the cold or the mud, but the insistent longing. Clouds mope about. Babushkas drink a fifth a day. Sometimes I take a pill that may cause drowsiness. Mostly, though, my heart swims around like a goldfish in a clear plastic bag. It isn’t true that an angel appeared one morning with an announcement. I can’t remember now why I ever thought it was. In this country, you can easily become the sort of person you never wanted to be, broken statuary along the path, secret hiding places just ahead, schoolgirls whispering behind their hands.

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Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Middle of Nowhere (Olivia Eden Publishing). With Dale Wisely, he co-edits White Knuckle Press, a publisher of digital chapbooks.

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