elegy for the unadopted

by Howie Good

I was resting on the flowered couch after work. You were

there, too, nursing someone else’s baby. We heard a noise

like the sky emptying black baseballs from its pockets. We

thought about hiding the baby in the basement. Remember?

Or in the field behind the house among the mournful eyes

of meat cows. It’s so long ago now, but the birds at the

feeder still talk about it, how night scratched at the

door and I let it in rather than go searching for some

matches and a candle.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the author of nine poetry chapbooks, has just had his first full-length collection of poems, Lovesick, published by Press Americana. For more information, visit http://www.americanpopularculture.com/press_americana.htm