A FOOTNOTE TO MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY / HOWIE GOOD

Friend of the profligate, the drowsy, the distractable, saying you’re pretty isn’t the same as saying I’d want to listen to you complain that every conversation with me feels like a vocabulary test. You woke up hoping that today is the day you qualify for the grand-prize drawing, a six-figure salary, a lifetime membership in the disappearing middle class. I woke up hoping to get through the next thing, and the next, and the next with my soul still sort of intact. You keep stopping in the crosswalk to do shit with your phone, and I keep waiting for this light to change.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Dreaming in Red from Right Hand Pointing and Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press.