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Friday, December 28, 2012

MARS

by Howie Good





The god of carnage has grown
a balding man’s stringy ponytail.
Red, he says, means danger.
He shrugs his cruelly thin shoulders.

A tractor stands abandoned
in a field of what looks from here
like black puddles of blood.

The future will burn a full 40 days.
We will walk beside our coffins.
Starvelings will stare out

from behind barbed wire.
Mothers will shriek. There will be
nice grass in the cemetery.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.