On the Eve of the Next War

Howie Good

 

On the Eve of the Next War

 

Hear that? you ask. Hear what? I say. Both of us look, but only you see the fuzzy gray silhouette of a bombed building. Nothing matters and nothing connects. The torn gum wrappers are one small hint. Elderly tourists covered in cameras are another. You must have been thinking of a different country, somewhere where they cut the sugar cane by hand. It isn’t until later, while I’m still shaking my head at your question, that the sky bangs shut. I used to love the dark or just after, when there’s no longer a near and a far and what may really only be planets look like stars.

 

 

Howie Good is a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz. He 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.