Fear Itself
by Howie Good

The peeling paint of his heart

grows steadily louder,

 

like the churning of a doorbell

and the eight-year-old girl

 

shot in the face by an uncle

when she answered the door.

 

 

Song #5

Not every place

with mobsters is New Jersey.

 

It says it right on the bag,

Plano, Texas, where Frito-Lay lives.

 

Red grapes or green,

it’s all made of the same mad stuff,

 

debris blazing from the Big Bang.

Because everyone knows

 

what the shortest distance

between two points is. It’s love.

 

HOWIE GOOD, a journalism professor at the State University of New York, is the author of 18 poetry chapbooks, including Police and Questions (2008) and Still Like with Firearms (2009) from Right Hand Pointing, Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks, Visiting the Dead (2009) from Flutter Press, and My Heart Draws a Rough Map (2009) from The Blue Hour Press. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and four times for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry, Lovesick, was released in 2009 by Press Americana.

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