TrainWrite

In Absentia

by Howie Good

1

I asked the pale child on the playground where you were. No answer. I went upstairs, but the bed was empty. If I closed my eyes for even one moment, I was pestered by flies and terrible dreams. I came back down. The new world suffered from the same impudent weather as the old. I stopped every few feet to look around. Whole weeks rushed past me. A stranger’s face quivered with emotion. I thought I was dead. I wished I was dying.


2

Which would you take, the shortest route or the most scenic? My poor mother! She wouldn’t drive on highways, but it was her humid and flaking heart that killed her. Small brown birds scatter as I approach, unwilling to share their diseases. Something from last night’s dream is caught in the bushes. I bend down to see what. A mouth rimmed in salt presses against mine.

.

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. His poem, “1933,” appeared in the June 3, 2011 issue of TrainWrite.

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