Saturday, May 24, 2008

AMERICA, AMERICA

by Howie Good


The story goes that the day
my grandmother got off the boat,

just a girl from the village,
the dead were parading past

with crumbling, infested faces,
and ever after, she saw,

or, rather, sensed,
the future in her peripheral vision,

God dangling from a broken pulley
and the stars turning black.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of four poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007) from FootHills Publishing, Strangers & Angels (2007) from Scintillating Publications, and the forthcoming The News at 11 from Right Hand Pointing. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals. He has been nominated for the Best of the Web anthology and twice for a Pushcart Prize.
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