"... Weeks before during arts and crafts, the entire supply of orange crayons ran out ..."

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Brent recommends these on line literary sites.

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Contact
Mr. Goodman

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Brent Goodman reads "Security Mirrors" in Real Audio

Security Mirrors

Standing in line at the D.M.V.
I am no longer in love with memory.
Expire and renew. The pages of missing
fade and curl into themselves, pinned to the walls
like maps of distant cities. What about the lost
who never come back, faces empty as unsigned letters?
What about security mirrors bending our sight,
or the gray shaking ATM footage missing
every other frame: there must be hours of us somewhere
weighting huge dark reels--drunk, resigned, furtive--
every withdrawal of our lives fully recorded, every
misremembered story hanging like a stranger's cologne
in the back of a taxi. What if each day a part of us
never returns, lifted away like page after cryptic page?
Expire, renew--every life must move
one sullen photograph at a time until
we're ready to pour our sight into the peripheral
vision machine. Until we're ready to reveal
the maps of rivers hidden behind our eyes.
I've always stepped forward when told.
Leaning in, the held breath in my chest
hangs like two intricately folded wings.





Fire At Psychic Camp Was Foreseen By Some

"Through the last three of four years, several people
have seen one of the hotels burning"
-Win Srogi, president of the Indiana Association of Spiritualists.

Of course, that would explain
this summer's poor enrollment,
though some foresaw that as well
but failed to making the connection.
Imagine that night: the narrow dorm hall,
rows of young psychics dreaming
in their bunks, so many unstruck matches.
And the boy who saw himself
waving from a window before splintering
into flame--where was he
when smoke flooded the woods? Even
the minor psychics, the pencil spinners
and spoon benders, telepathic twins,
the counselor surviving on lottery scratch-offs:
did they stand before the future
and watch it burn? Time folds back
on itself, papery edges overlapping,
and sometimes we stumble upon
that intricate note. It wasn't surprising
fire trucks arrived early, sirens shocking
the dark. Weeks before during arts and crafts,
the entire supply of orange crayons
ran out, enough visions postering the walls
to make the small room glow.





GLASS PAINTING WITH SUN

--after Vasily Kandinsky

Behind this landscape
there is a clarity.

Behind this angle of light
across the empty woodrose,

the transparent sound of water.
Imagine the thousand echoing rooms

beneath the surface of the lake--
a single wooden boat

sways in the harbor, testing
each door with its heavy key.

This is what keeps it
from drifting. And you

who avoids the painting
which thinks itself a window:

isn't the room well lit?
Sometimes your breath catches

as if light could pass through you
and pastel the dull walls.

Outside, the old oak
waits all day for its shadow

to circle and return. You pace
for a long while inside studying

the only path to the house,
a god shaped hole opening

between the stone wall
and the gravel road.