Abject Colors by Howie Good

My father, in the long days
just after the factory closed down,
would sit staring morosely
at the TV for hours.
Meanwhile, my mother
shut herself up in the bedroom.
I could hear her in there
alternately raving and weeping.
“Love is like a tree,” Victor Hugo said.
I was the kid you saw
crunching through dead leaves.



Howie Good's latest poetry books are The Horses Were Beautiful, available from Grey Book Press, and Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems from Redhawk Publications.