Falling Backwards

1
Men are arrested overnight with nothing of mine in their pockets. I sleep late, while the morning, face full of gray stubble, waits downstairs. In another kind of world, I might have had my name and occupation detailed on a window in gold lettering.

2
The music is keeping secrets, but also telling stories. And I quote: Winning doesn’t feel as good as losing feels bad. Come autumn, the fog lingers longer, clocks fall back an hour per hour. I left a raincoat somewhere. Please let me know if you happen to see it sitting in the library, breath made visible.

3
All light is interesting, she says, waving a brush loaded with cadmium red. I have too few teeth left to smile freely or I would. There is no darkness as dark as the darkness of man.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks.