Two Poems: Howard Good

Loops

I had trouble learning
to tie my shoes,

so my mother took me
to a rabbi. I was five,

six. He demonstrated
on his own shoes first.

Sometimes I think
I dreamed the rabbi

with his long, scary beard.
My mother is dead now.

I still make two loops
and slip one through the other.

* * * * *

Litany

Furtive glances and whispers,
bare, bereft trees,
unfaithful gods lolling about
a galaxy of tinfoil stars,
the dead from the newspaper
receding into white space
while strangers stare
at their inscrutable backs,
on my machine a voice
I don’t recognize announcing
a new age, though horses scream,
and it’s night, and the creek
overflows as with sudden tears.



~ Howard Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the poetry chapbook, Death of the Frog Prince (FootHills Publishing, 2004). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Right Hand Pointing, Stirring, Slow Trains, Poetry Bay, Sidewalk’s End, Plum Ruby Review, Wilmington Blues, The Rose & Thorn, 2River View, Prairie Poetry, Armada, Eclectica, and Lily.