New Years Resolution Poems

Resolutions
by Howie Good


I will use
whiskey only

for gargling.
I will argue

that dogs are
U.S. citizens, too.

I will compare work
to a strip search.

I will stare at you
as if you were

someone else.
I will call it war

rather than
armed conflict,

and in my head,

I will see myself
spiraling down

in orange flames.
I will admire

the dainty feet
of a hugely

fat woman.
I will place birds

like commas
around the yard.


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 My Heart Draws a Rough Map from The Blue Hour Press and Ghosts of Breath from Bedouin Books. 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.




****

Revelations

by Kenneth Pobo

I play the New Colony Six’s

’68 Revelations album—

who was I at 14?  A silly boy,

a bright boy, a gay boy,

a boy with WCFL stuck to his ear,

Ron Britain’s sound effects,

thinking who will I be

at 15?  I’m 55,

forty years under the porch.

Resolutions, dreams--

I should be more this,

more that.  Should, an eagle,

and talons drop me.

I must make changes—

learn kindness, patience,

and like the NC6, I have

things I’d like to say

that rust in the shed

where I don’t see them,

or maybe in the basement

behind paper towels—things

that need saying, badly,

go unsaid, die,

stink bugs

between curtain folds.

Kenneth Pobo won the 2009 Main Street Rag poetry chapbook contest for his manuscript called Trina and the Sky. His work appears online at Forpoetry.com, DeComp, Iddie, Loch Raven Review, and elsewhere.

****

Janus

by Tim Scannell

Spent at end of year
- Hourglass emptied out -
Crystalline, Sparkling words
Wizened, shot about.

Ground to dust, erose
- Facet tumbled, retched -
Word-eke's wan December:
"Reshape Doorman - relent!"

Tim Scannell has 1,300 credits in over 400 publications. He lives in the woods, hard against the boundary of Olympic National Park, WA.