AN AMERICAN IN BELGIUM
1
Clocks imprisoned in stone began ticking.
Everybody born here seemed to know what that meant.
I hadn’t spent much time in skyscrapers,
holding the black receiver to my ear.
2
The rain fell. I watched through the train window.
Cows were kneeling in a field
out of a mistaken notion of humility.
3
A hand had washed ashore outside Antwerp.
Somebody mentioned the Congolese;
somebody else, the Russian mafia.
“Can you taste the honey?”
another new friend asked,
the table crowded with bottles
and bulbous beer glasses.
I said I could. I couldn’t.
–
YPRES
Despite
a cold
misty rain
poplars
stand
at attention
as
we wander
jet-lagged
down rows
& rows
of gravestones
40,000
stubby
white teeth
bared
–
MEMORY OF FIRST DATES
High on Afghani Gold,
we’d press our bodies together
like palms in prayer
& recede into sawdust
& iridescent suds
on the road out to Meyer’s farm,
where palaces of graffiti
forty-three years later
make such magnificent ruins.
–
Howie Good is a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz and is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Dreaming in Red from Right Hand Pointing and Cryptic Endearments from Knives, Forks & Spoons Press. His forthcoming books include The Death of Me from Pig Ear Press and Strange Roads from Puddle of Sky Press.
the Entroper 