BORDERS

by Howie Good

Nature abhors borders. A smoky haze from Canadian wildfires blots out the sun in Columbus, Ohio. An earthquake under the Sea of Japan shakes skyscrapers in LA. The Earth shares one skin. Borders are human constructs, a kind of illusion, lines that appear on maps without appearing on corresponding landscapes. Governments speak of the sanctity of borders. The smoke from far up north has turned daylight where I live a ghostly amber. There are no borders, really, only fences and patrols and checkpoints as if there were. Men have died by the millions defending what doesn’t exist.

Howie Good's latest poetry collection True Crime was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.

TWO-WEEK TRUCE

by Howie Good

 

 

Trees with buds

under the rubble 

 

 

Howie Good is a widely published but little-known author.

THE KILLERS

by Howie Good

AI-generated video by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

You can hear the slow tick-tick-tick of the cooling engine. It’s the end of the so-called “American Century.” Conscienceless killers disguised as police prowl factories and airports and schools for new victims, and all with the sanction of a government of liars and thieves. The lamp beside the golden door has been shot out. My grandparents were poor Jews from the shtetl – in current parlance, “garbage people” from “shithole countries.” And look at me. My face, with its hollows and shadows, its worry lines and age wrinkles, is like a map, sort of, a map of a country I no longer know.

Howie Good is a widely published but little-known author.

THIS BIRD HAS FLOWN

A Prose Poem

by Howie Good

President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia concluded their summit in Alaska on Friday without declaring agreement on any issue, much less the one Mr. Trump said was at the top of his agenda, ending the war in Ukraine. —The New York Times, August 15. 2025

The other day I saw a bald eagle for only the second time in my life. It soared over the treeline on the far side of the marsh. Almost in the same instant that I recognized it from its distinctive silhouette, it was gone, our national bird, symbol of strength and freedom. We are entering the last days of summer. Some of the plants I planted in the spring never grew, and the plants that did grow have begun dying. I dread the coming winter, a hulking, red-eyed monster roving streets of blackened ruins.

Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose poetry collections include The Dark and Akimbo, available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. 

A FABLE

by Howie Good

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Someone is shouting, “Freedom!” 
or maybe “Free them!” The shouts
 
echo through gray, empty streets 
and die. I don’t follow the news. 
 
I’m not into politics. I walk down 
a street lined with soldiers and tanks. 
 
I turn up a street named for a tyrant.


Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book The Dark is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

CANCER JEW

by Howie Good

We’re told that life, it can be a wedding or a funeral, happy or melancholy, just depends if we act like mourners or celebrants, it’s our choice, whether we dab away tears of joy or shed ones of grief, responsibility for our happiness, we’re told in podcasts and internet articles and by subliminal suggestion, is entirely ours, regardless of the colossal forces, the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics, the self-corrections of the market, that shape and direct our lives, that hurl us through a worrying present toward a future we already regret, tumors on eyes and nose and mouth and shadows congealing into a dark mass, a Jew lying on the ground, beaten to the point of death.

 

Note: “Cancer Jew” is a Dutch anti-Semitic slur.

Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

FALL EQUINOX 2024

by Howie Good

AI-Generated graphic from Shutterstock for The New Verse News

Smell it? 
The cold breath of unease.

Howie Good's new poetry book The Dark is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

BROKEN WORLD

by Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of The Dark, a poetry collection forthcoming from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

READING THE NEWS

by Howie Good

We are all neighbors 

and what is poetry 
but a few simple words 
that somehow express
complicated things 
the towering piles of corpses 
in the Ukraine and Gaza 
and the movies

Howie Good's latest book Frowny Face (Redhawk Publishing, 2023) is a mix of his prose poems and handmade collages. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

HEADLINES

by Howie Good

“Springtime” Claude Monet 1886 Fitzwilliam Museum (University of Cambridge), Cambridge, UK

Baby dies in attic fire. 400 dead in floods and landslides. 3 killed, 6 injured in New Mexico shooting. “All of life,” the Buddha said, “is sadness,” as if he’d been reading the same headlines as me. Cops seek masked gunman. Ukrainian attack looms. 12-year-old charged with murder. Every day the mirror held up to existence only darkens further. Then the spring melt reveals there’s been grass alive under the snow this whole time. Birds return to the marsh from the hot countries full of excited chatter. Sunshine grows brighter and more frequent and falls like a benediction on old bent trees and fat buds and us who don’t even deserve it. 

Howie Good's newest poetry collection Heart-Shaped Hole which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

WHAT THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK SAID

by Howie Good

As of January 24, the Doomsday Clock sits at 90 seconds to midnight. Jamie Christiani /   Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

The chemistry set I got for my 10th birthday came with glass test tubes and small bottles of dry chemicals in jewellike colors, plus a booklet with precise instructions on how to rubberize a hardboiled egg. It was the era of the Space Race. The scientist in the white lab coat held the Cold War rank of cultural spokesperson for progress. We were taught in school to worship science, as thousands of years ago a many-eyed beast with a body like a leopard’s and feet like a bear’s was worshipped. The clock declares it’s now nine seconds to midnight. Down in the street, an addled homeless man waves his arms around while remonstrating with a vicious-looking companion only he can see. 

Howie Good's latest poetry book is Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems from Redhawk Publications. He co-edits the journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

REVENGE

by Howie Good

Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City more than doubled last month from a year ago, NYPD data show — a troubling trend that unfolded against a backdrop of high-profile figures making headlines for remarks targeting Jewish people. —New York Daily News, December 5, 2022

The nicely dressed grandmother

seated next to me at the holiday concert

began to complain under her breath

when the high school orchestra

broke into the Chanukkah song “Dreidel Dreidel”

after 40 minutes of Christmas music.

It’s a good thing I’m accustomed

since an early age to cringing inside.

My father, after the factory permanently closed,

would just stare at the TV for hours,

a broken man, morose, prostrate, unshaven.

Out of the corner of my eye

I examined the still muttering woman

and for once wished that life

was like the plot of one of those

direct-to-video Bruce Willis actioners—

blah blah, pow pow.

Howie Good's latest poetry book is The Horses Were Beautiful (2022), available from Grey Book Press. Redhawk Publications is publishing his collection Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems later this year.

ELECTION DAY

by Howie Good

We shout for help, but the music from a passing car is so loud our shouts are drowned out. I punch in the emergency number stored on my phone and after listening to interminable ringing get a fuzzy pre-recorded message: “All our representatives are resisting” – assisting? – “other customers at this time.” And people wonder why the Wampanoag, the tribe that taught the Pilgrims how to survive their first winter in Plymouth, still regret it 400 years later. I fear for my country. Bodies are lying here and there and walking through dark forests. 

Howie Good's latest poetry book is The Horses Were Beautiful (2022), available from Grey Book Press. Redhawk Publications is publishing his collection Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems later this year.

THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF JUSTICE

by Howie Good

The gunman

shoots to death

19 children

 

in an elementary school

in Texas

 

and then turns the gun

on himself.

Editor's Note: The specific circumstances of the death of the shooter at the scene of Robb Elementary School had not yet been clarified by authorities at the time of the posting of this poem. Since then, authorities have announced that the gunman was killed by law enforcement officers.

Howie Good is a poet and collagist on Cape Cod.

AUTUMN ELEGY

Photo source: Plimouth Patuxet Museums

Howie Good is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY, 2021

by Howie Good

The SS officer rolled the corpse over, and the girl saw the face of her music teacher, with blood here and there. He had gone to fetch a ration of bread, and a loaf was sticking out of his coat. The girl drew closer. It looked like a serious piece of bread, and Jews had little to eat, soup that was mostly water with grass. Her instinct was to grab the bread and run. But she left it. She left it because she saw his face, with blood here and there.

&

When someone complains to me about trivial stuff, I’ll say, “Oh yeah, try going through life as a Howard.” In Judaism, at least as practiced by my parents, one is named in honor of a person who has died. I was named in honor of my mother’s father’s brother. I never met him. I’ve never even seen a picture of him. He died long before I was born and without leaving a trace—except for the 100-year-old man, a former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, arrested in Germany on 3,518 counts of being an accessory to murder.

&

It’s spring in name but not in substance. The land, to my amazement, seems to constantly rearrange itself in wild new patterns of rage and decay. On the border, small brown children languish in lockups. On city streets, young black men in police chokeholds beg for breath. There is something I have to do. I don’t know how I will do it. I just know from the pressure of tears behind my eyes that it has to be done.

Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press), The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro Press), and Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

THE NEW MATH

by Howie Good

If a total of eight people

are shot to death

at three massage parlors

in Atlanta, Georgia,

 

and the following week

10 people are shot

to death at a supermarket

in Boulder, Colorado,

 

how long before

the next mass shooting

in the U.S. occurs?

 

Show all work.

Howie Good's most recent poetry collection is Gunmetal Sky, available from Thirty West Publishing.

MASKED AND DISTANCED

by Howie Good

Photo of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp from the archives of the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen.

The avenue is near deserted, no parades,

few people, everyone a possible biohazard.

 

I sit at home in front of the computer

rather than be masked and distanced.

 

A 100-year-old man has been arrested

in Germany on 3,518 counts of being

an accessory to murder during the Holocaust.

 

When I lift my eyes from the screen,

it always seems to be night and raining.

Howie Good is the author of more than two dozen poetry collections, including most recently The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press), The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro Press), and Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

POST-ELECTION STRESS DISORDER

by Howie Good

 

Thousands of President Trump’s supporters converged on Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14 to falsely claim he won the election. (Video: Jorge Ribas, Joyce Koh/Photo: Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

The emperor’s model army marches on,

bringing with them the suffocating smell of smoke,

a darkness like mud, while tens of millions

of just plain folks artlessly demonstrate their devotion

by cheering threats of kidnapping and murder

and parading bright new flags that with each wave

in the lie-filled air grow duller and more tattered,  

and when the light dwindles to a final few hours,

there will be tweet storms and wild speeches

and the military music of boots stamping on faces.

Howie Good is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

STATISTIC

by Howie Good

After six years of war in Yemen, it looks like the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is being forgotten and treated with indifference. —Atlantic Council, September 17, 2020. Photo: Burying a child who was killed in an airstrike in Sana, Yemen, in 2017. Credit: Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency via The New York Times, September 16, 2020.

A boy lies sprawled

by the edge of the road,

his chest torn open

by a chunk of shrapnel.

You could see his heart beating

if you bothered to look. 

Howie Good is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.