for Darla
An old man is telling a story at a nearby table, something about the price of scrap metal after the war, when suddenly his voice drops and he mutters, the Jews. My wife and I look at each other, feel the swaying of cattle cars
speeding along receding rails. Our daughter notices. What? she asks. It’s the night before she auditions for college, and her eyes are circles within
anxious circles, whirlpools of Prussian Blue. I shake my head. Nothing, I say, and we finish eating, then go up to our room at the Quality Inn and lie on the beds and watch TV, an America of smiling neighbors and kind doctors and
charmingly deranged seniors, and the next morning we check out early and drive through darkness and fog, and all that she might sing.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills Publishing, and Strangers & Angels (2007) from Scintillating Publications. He was recently nominated for the second time for a Pushcart Prize.