I AM DRAWING A MAP

by Howard Winn

the little boy said

as he hunched over

his crumpled bit of

paper with the stub

of pencil clutched in

one dirty little hand

of the street he added

so I will know where

all my friends and

enemies live and then

I will know where

it is safe to go and 

where not to go

for there are good guys

and bad ones my mother

says mothers know

she says and my father

agrees and i wonder

how they learned to

tell the good from the bad

A new collection of Howard Winn's poetry has just been published. It is titled Comedy and other observations. Howard Winn continues as Professor of English SUNY.

KNOWLEDGE FROM A POEM

by Howard Winn

Wallace Stevens would have known
what to make of the leader we find
ourselves with the man who is
really the emperor of ice cream
liquid only under certain icy temperatures
and much too saccharine to be permanent
and even true and self-appointed to
lead the selfish and the stupid
with minds that speak to the child-
like desires of self and the race
they believe is the right one to
lead and rule and to kill the
different, who dare to suggest
all human kind of many colors
counts equally in a democracy
that is more solid than ice cream.


Howard Winn has just had published a collection of his poems, many of which have been published in major literary journals. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

HE WOULD LIKE TO BE A CONFEDERATE GENERAL

by Howard Winn

but was born in the wrong era
even though he tries to assume the
role in modern times and dreams those flabby
wattles firmed into the mountainous
stone of Mount Rushmore with the
other great presidents where he knows
he belongs as the statues come down
he poses as if he could join one eternal
and turns to the computer and twitter
away as if an eternal mockingbird
that ignores the twenty first century
and will bring back the America
that split into the democracy and the
autocracy supported by the labor
of slavery subject to their murder
in the pretense of maintaining law
and order which masks prejudice
and chauvinism that supports
the fake humanism of the fox
slinks in to empty arenas and
pretends there is always an admiring
crowd of empty seats that do not clap

Howard Winn's poetry and fiction has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his published poetry will be published in early summer.

HISTORY

by Howard Winn

A D-Day commemoration on the beach of Arromanches in France on June 6, 2019, marking the 75th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy in World War II. (Joel Saget/Getty-AFP via Chicago Tribune)

of D Day by genetic fate

there is no escape

is where I find myself

with only three percent left

it seems The Greatest Generation

labeled by that newsman who

needed a catchy concept to draw

his audience for the news of the day

when other networks stood ready 

to step in to alter the ratings so

he found the catchy concept for

the mostly children drafted some 

out of high school to be the new

war heroes even though the survivors

kept quiet about their sacrifices 

often with loss of limbs

they were as voiceless as the bodies

buried in those field of crosses in

France where the living might 

have found them selves if they

were as unlucky as those who

survived to become portrayed in

the films of the next life leaving

today only the three percent who

movies seem to give permission to

recount the history they had kept

secret about until the later wars

involving their children gave some

permission to reveal fears and cruelty

for those survivors once silent veterans 

of that conflict between the dead and 

the emotionally quiet and silent for

history to become reality not just story

Howard Winn publishes widely in literary journals such as the Hiram Poetry Review and Valley Voices Journal. His novel has been published by Propertius Press.

MEMORIAL DAY COMES

by Howard Winn

Memorial Day is an American federal holiday. It honors those who have died while serving, but it also kicks starts the summer season and has become a weekend-long shopping extravaganza in the US. The holiday itself is the last Monday in May. So, this year, it is May 27, but most of the sales start the Friday before or even sooner. Nearly every retailer is holding a Memorial Day Weekend sale, where you can find great bargains on everything from grills and washers to TVs and laptops. Here are some of the best US deals and promotions we've spotted so far. —Pocket-lint, May 24, 2019

and our heroic leader having escaped
to Japan for a democratic or rather a
Republican weekend also thanks some
deity for his bone spurs that turned
him into the fake battle equivalent hero
while this weekend holiday sends the bargain
hunters to the holiday sales  and the thankful
condition of not needing to work on Monday
while lessor politicians hold events to honor
the "boys and the girls" who sacrificed so much
often including their lives in these old men's wars
which the children fight and die in so that
military cemeteries fill with accidental heroes
where the survivors some in their doddering age
can be remembered for a moment between the
shopping forays  which is what holidays are really for
in this current culture of money and power


Howard Winn publishes widely in literary journals such as the Hiram Poetry Review  and Valley Voices Journal. His novel has been published by Propertius Press.

FULL CENTURY

by Howard Winn

In honor of Lawrence Ferlinghetti at one hundred years.

has receded into history
and the beat goes on
although by now all his disciples
have passed out of the San
Francisco air of what was
once the unfashionable district
until the boys and girls of
the computer culture in the
Silicon Valley began seeking
sophistication and superiority
leaving the famous bookstore
where world changing verse
and fiction issued forth
brightening the shop window
of that literary cradle of the hip
and the mind of the rebels who
have along with the city itself turned
on the lights of sensation and
changed the very character of culture
way beyond the aura of sophistication
that made the city at the top
of that green peninsula the center
of the new culture that swept
both state and country and the world
never to be forgotten or erased


Howard Winn's poetry has been published most recently in Evening Street Review and Adelaide Literary Journal.

OUR MYTHS

by Howard Winn

from Pilgrim ancestry
that glorifies individuality
is a made-up story
that makes the official
history of our cultural
sources appear to honor
independence of belief
when in truth our national
first source was in the
world of the Puritans
quite willing to kill those
not of their sect with
other fables to guide them
to their versions of the moral
life for their redemption
in conflict with that of the pure
whom they would condemn
to the Hell of their dogma
for the beginning of our
nation was mired in the
bigotry of faith and creed
was the key to belonging
and individuality was a sin


Howard Winn's poetry has been published most recently in Mississippi's Valley Voices Literary Journal in Mississippi and Maine's The Aurorean Literary Journal.

ADVICE FROM THE PATRIARCHY

by Howard Winn

Original cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon

Be a good girl and leave things as they are
since that arrangement has worked well
for us over the ages as we found
power and satisfaction with the way
issues have operated to our advantage
and questioning only gets in our way
you may cry a little when the time
seems appropriate but not kicking or
screaming that would be disturbing
and shift the attention to any ill treatment
you may see and feel for the way
we run the society has worked for us
and you ladies or girls should step aside
or submit when we desire it and your
feelings or even intellect is secondary
to our feelings of seniority and grandeur
even our misplaced anger is part of the
way we have built our sense of superiority
and supremacy which must not be
questioned in this patriarchy we have
fashioned over time and generations
to our benefit and personal profit

Howard Winn's novel Acropolis is published by Propertius Press. He has poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

DARWIN AT WORK

by Howard Winn

When watching orangutans in nature documentaries, it is easy to imagine them as graceful rulers of the canopy; to whom climbing and brachiating through the trees is as natural and simple as breathing. This, however, would be an incorrect assumption. Just as toddlers learn to walk from following their parents, and through plenty of trial and error, young orangutans too must learn how to navigate the world around them. As the largest arboreal mammal in the world, orangutans face a steep learning curve when first grasping how to maneuver on their own in the forest. —Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, August 1, 2018

If humanity does not change its ways
soon there will be no orangutans
we are told by the latest scientific
findings and the survey of these
strange beasts who seem like the
crazy cousins of homo sapiens
but in a world run by the rules of
business capitalism these sub-human
beasts have no union to protect their
status in a jungle with profit hidden
in the vines and the rain forests
just waiting for the latest entrepreneur
to make the proper business move
perhaps Chinese or Middle Eastern
to join the one percent who own
the semi-civilized world stash the
profits off-shore and buy expensive
real estate in London or New York
while the residual orangutans in
their diminishing jungle residences
find themselves as homeless as
the other immigrants of this time
with no where to go and no welcome
there or anywhere even if labor
is running short in the civilized nations.


Howard Winn's novel Acropolis is published by Propertius Press. He has poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

ZOMBIE

by Howard Winn

‘Donald Trump may have signed an executive order to end the separation of families at the southern border, but his administration is not making any special efforts to immediately reunite the 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under his “zero tolerance” policy.’ —The Guardian, June 21, 2018. Photo: A tent encampment in Tornillo, Texas, to house immigrant children. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images via The Guardian.

The ghost of Goebbels creeps
through the edges of our current
landscape as he whispers lies
again and again until the innocent
believers think they know it is
the truth and although the ghost
swallowed the cyanide with his
wife after murdering his children
with poison in the temporary
defeat of his deceptions and lies
which seemed to have a life of
their own because it is too easy
to believe what the weak want to
believe to give them faked strength
as the powerful gain even more
power and cash as they delude
the defenseless and have no empathy
for the fragile and vulnerable
since winning the unequal struggle
is all that matters to the bigoted
no matter the wounded and their pain


Howard Winn's novel Acropolis is published by Propertius Press. He has poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

ANOTHER MEMORIAL DAY

by Howard Winn

NORWALK, CT — While stationed in northeast India during World War II, Nick Samodel repaired cargo planes that hauled supplies over the towering Himalaya Mountains to allied soldiers fighting the Japanese. “We had five airbases close to the mountains,” said Samodel, who served as an aircraft mechanic in the U.S. Army Air Corps. “We had to change the engines and fix oil leaks — that was a big problem because at high altitudes the oil leaks out through the seals. It takes a lot of maintenance. We lost some planes. They found one 10 years ago on the side of a mountain.” On Monday, Samodel, 97, of Norwalk,  served as grand marshal in the 2018 Memorial Day Parade. —The Hour, May 26, 2018

Summer begins
and the ice cream shop
on the corner
opens for the season
while the families
gather on the corner
of Route 77 and Shore
Road to applaud
the earnest children
in the high school band
marching by led by the
grizzled World War II
survivor wearing his
old uniform which he
must preserve in a clothes
bag at the back of a closet
to remember once a year
the deaths in the Battle
of the Bulge or the killings
in the Western Pacific or
perhaps just service in Army
Supply in New Jersey where
heroes not quite lurked in view of
the sea and vacation beaches
and waited for discharge
while spending time being
entertained by the young
women volunteering for
time to party in the USO
so war could be forgotten
for a social moment to be
resurrected each year on
Memorial Day dedicated to
the waste of war even good ones
for patriotism is both the flaw
and the consequence of nationalism
even when reduced to jingoism


Howard Winn's novel Acropolis is published by Propertius Press. He has poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

SWAMP CREATURE

by Howard Winn

Emerging from the slime
accumulated over past time
it rears its frightening head
licking its lips preparatory
to swinging its massive
posterior shaking off the
gunk which never the less
clings as if a growth on
this beast of the slime
out of the past seeking
a future in the muck of
self-satisfaction at being
an organism that knows
without knowing that it
is the future unless we
eradicate it in its present moment
as it rises out of the self-
serving stinking quagmire








Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

EASTER

by Howard Winn

Easter Island is critically vulnerable to rising ocean levels. . . . Many of the moai statues and nearly all of the ahu, the platforms that in many cases also serve as tombs for the dead, ring the island. With some climate models predicting that sea levels will rise by five to six feet by 2100, residents and scientists fear that storms and waves now pose a threat like never before. “You feel an impotency in this, to not be able to protect the bones of your own ancestors,” said Camilo Rapu, the head of Ma’u Henua, the indigenous organization that controls Rapa Nui National Park, which covers most of the island, and its archaeological sites. “It hurts immensely.” —Nicholas, Casey, The New York Times, March 15, 2018

Discovered by the western world
on that religious holiday
although the residents of
the island knew it was there
at the end of long canoe trips
some thought the huge heads
could only be the work of beings
from other planets not of this
world until inquisitive explorers
found the remnants of unfinished
heads and now as the seas rise
despite the anti-science deniers
and the islands sink beaches
disappear and vacations to
swim with warm sand under
foot are no longer what the
adventurous wealthy can
indulge in as trees vanish
and Pacific waters wash over
farm lands and orchards of
tropical fruit while history
and inexplicable stone heads
vanish into the southern seas
to remain only for a time in
memory or in history books
the fate of things in a world
of times past and legend
takes the place of scientific fact

Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

GOD GAVE US THE RIGHT

by Howard Winn

Photograph by Erik Ravelo from his 2013 sequence “Los Intocables” (“The Untouchables) featuring a variety of issues plaguing children around the world. “The right to childhood should be protected,” Ravelo writes.

to bear arms
announces the high priest of
the Church of the Rifle
and not a mere mortal
even though the government
wrote the laws that
support the dogma of this
Faith where the AK-47
has replaced the wine
and wafer that becomes
the blood and body of
the redeemer who kills
children without a qualm
as part of the new sacrament


Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

OPPOSING THE GREAT LEADER

by Howard Winn


is an act of treason
if he is the country
but if he is only a
hot-air balloon
waiting the pin-prick
of truth to fall deflated
at our feet as the mere
rubber lawn decoration
for Halloween or a plastic
rabbit for the Easter
holiday to celebrate his
myth of the second coming
he must be deposed in
celebration of veracity
for to honor this figment
of his own manufacture
is the worst blasphemy of all



Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

WELCOME TO KOCHSWANA

by Howard Winn

the land birthed in the 21st Century
where the apparent leaders from
the top on down are actually owned
by the secret sacred holy brothers
who possess the private country
of their name and where multiple
businesses destroy the air one breathes
and the food one consumes
inside the borders of this private
domain which only appears to
be the land of the free for
ordinary folk do not have access
to anything but phony facts
while honest science is ridiculed
and simulated scientists are easily
purchased and mock billionaires
are ready to make believe to run
the country and hold their positions
enriching themselves by the day
as long as they follow
orders and take the money


Howard Winn's work, both short fiction and poetry has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

SECOND COMING

by Howard Winn

Image by JasperDyne

He stood in the center of the mall
the lights giving the illusion of a halo
hovering round his rather long hair
next to the gaudy merry-go-round
wearing a kind of robe as if an
overcoat against the winter chill
although the concourse and stores
seem a bit over-heated and bright
particularly at the door of the
shop selling Victoria’s Secret
on nearly nude plastic models
of the most perfect proportions
and cocked his head to listen to
the mellifluous baritone voice
sing out over the shoppers
I wish you a merry Christmas
I wish you a merry Christmas
to the somewhat tinny musical
background supporting the lyrics
of joy and even recorded rapture
for it would seem true believers
would be out shopping for the
other proper members of their
faith for spending and buying was clearly
the mark of the savior and redeemer.


Howard Winn's work, both short fiction and poetry has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

POLITICIAN

by Howard Winn

The doorbell rang once politely
and he was already smiling
when I opened the front door
while his hand reached out
in welcome as he said my name
and we agreed that I was
in fact that person enrolled
in his political party and ready
to vote when the time came
for we must throw the rascals
out not having voted to put them
in at the last election day when
we with the best intentions lost
out and in fact we were right
for fraud and personal gain has
been revealed although we
wonder if the voters read or
care as we stand in the doorway
agreeing how right we were
the last time even if the majority
did not know or pay attention
so having concurred we shook hands
once again and he turned into
the rain to try the next registered
door and I went back to lunch
wondering if our conversation
had mattered since the opposition
was not there to hear our wisdom
exchanged since they were our
beliefs and not their convictions
as it seems always the case
and once again we talk to ourselves

Howard Winn's work, both short fiction and poetry has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

ADVICE TO A PRESIDENT

by Howard Winn

from a president
literate and wise
protect our democratic institutions
for those are what
distinguish us from the
world’s dictatorships
and it is our role
to provide that pattern
which has been
established by wise
people over time
for presidents are temporary
guardians of unique
traditions established out
of the experience of
many judicious men and women
certified by courts of law
and genuine patriotism
not tin horn palaver
for the unique American
experience that must be treasured.


Howard Winn's work, both short fiction and poetry has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

DEATH TRIUMPHANT

by Howard Winn

Roger Ailes

But do not speak ill of the dead
was my mother’s advice when
I was young for as a believer
she felt that the lord’s judgment
would be fair and not need
disparaging human reminders
but those of us not so certain
there is any judgement except
the human one of a fair and honest
analysis is required in a civilized
world where true belief in being
“fair and balanced”  is merely a
hypocritical marketing slogan
rather than an honest statement of
principle and when the purveyor of
alternate facts and the misuser of
women passes from the scene as proper
victim of the bad blood of ruthless
kings honest reporting is a requirement
of an enlightened society not to fool
itself into laudatory obituaries unearned
when the evil one passes out of life
and truths of character must be disclosed.


Howard Winn's work, both short fiction and poetry has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline.  His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.