Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

AUTHOR BIO

1 Caution! Poet at Work
 
I have spent many hours
looking out my back door,
waiting for something to happen,
 
but nothing that would ever
be considered a police matter,
nothing even faintly suspicious,
 
just for the best words to appear
like pigeons strutting into view
wearing tiny cowboy hats.
 
 
2 What Is Poetry?
 
God’s image being restored,
paint fleck by paint fleck, on the ceiling,
 
the blue jay that keeps returning
all morning with a kind of tragic dignity
to the same empty feeder,
 
and me, me, the day-old baby
no one hears crying in the dumpster.
 
 
3 A Simple Prayer
 
My mom went
into the hospital
13 years ago today
and never came out.
 
Lord, protect me,
so every morning
I can sit by the window
and start a poem.
 
There’s a beauty
in inventing things
that serve no purpose.

WINTER SOLSTICE

1
Small white envelopes
blowing all about,
some torn open
and already empty,
but others with invitations
to a children’s party
forever sealed inside.
 
2
The town clock is frozen at half past,
but no matter the true time, or where,
 
at this very moment, we think we are,
you, me, even people we don’t know,
 
we’re all together in the same place,
under the overhang of a sheltering tree.
 
It’s what makes the dark so dark.