The Northville Review
an online literary journal
Song #4

Howie Good

But on a morning
when my wife

so softly dented
stands naked

in front of the closet
still deciding

between the dark blue
and the black

I feel as the last calamitous
emperor of Rome

might’ve felt writing
with a red

can of shaving cream
love is

and without
quotation marks

About the author

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of nine poetry chapbooks, most recently Visiting the Dead (2009) from Flutter Press.