if caught, miss the beginning of movies
on purpose but notice the first buds,
try painting it all one color and then stop
somewhere on the road and ambivalently wait
to be seated amid lost packages and strangers
and the slow, ancient waltz of maladroit busboys.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 12 poetry chapbooks, including most recently Visiting the Dead from Flutter Press, My Heart Draws a Rough Map from The Blue Hour Press, and Ghosts of Breath from Bedouin Books. He has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and five times for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry, Lovesick, was released in 2009 by Press Americana. He is co-editor of the online literary journal Left Hand Waving.