IN THE REGION OF THE HEART

Four on a gloomy afternoon.
Noisy birds only contribute

further to the clutter
of her parents’ bedroom.

Loneliness. Solitude.
It’s difficult to explain

the difference
if you have no French.

We grasp at each other
like orange traffic cones,

emergency vehicles.
Afterward, I walk back

under the shrugging trees,
my heart startled worse

than a bashed-in headlight.

I should never have thrown
away the box it came in.

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. 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.