Peremptory Signs Of Incipient Crisis

By Howie Good

I raise my hand
in greeting,

but what looks
like a person
coming toward me

isn’t.

The clock is frozen
at ten past.

Individual faces
have become
as indistinguishable
as raindrops.

In a corner,
a child chews
on slivers of glass.

The leaves
when it rains
make a noise
like applause.

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Here Begins the Work of Darkness

By Howie Good

Not day exactly, not exactly night either,
more like the gray of a long illness,
but if I grieved harder or healed better,
maybe the winter-pinched deer
would come down out of the trees to feed
and my promiscuous hands remember
the other hands they have touched,
the back ways and side streets and tangles,
and maybe columns of snow wouldn’t
build on the branches like new nests
abandoned just this morning by angels.

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