“Air Fair” doesn’t make sense. What Mary sees doesn’t compute. Only there’s no doubt. Right there, on TV, is Aunt Kit. And she’s wearing just what she’d worn to her mother’s funeral, down to the necklace and turquoise earrings. What sort of demented mojo is this? Beneath the dramatic voiceover This is the Plaintiff, Catherine Schmidt. She says that she… Read more →
Headline from Brides Magazine // 24 June 2021 One night, five weeks after your funeralyou crawled out of your grave. You creptacross barren streets and gutters half fullwith autumn, dragging your legs and losing bitsof belly with each block. I didn’t hear your gritty, ceaseless groan when you struggled through the open window, when you writheddown the hallway, or at last… Read more →
settles on your shoulders to weep what bones won’t hear to sing grim-lit and groovy to dance a grief subdued descend the stairs like baby hair intransigent as snow that froze time on the sharp blades of your back
Strong coffee laptop ritualistic SundayWindowpane turkey sandwich flashing stoplightAcross street taxi graffiti in resistance isosceles Fragment existence impulsion is implosionIs routine absorbed and how who knew the scarTearing black-and-white photographic winter Dolores Park Café the pigeons at our feet
I attempt many lives at once.The river rocks darken from the sweat of my palms.Crocuses again. The eggshell feathering stillholding in his old bedroom & his dress shirt swaying on the hanger.Going to bed w/o dinner. excruciating, familiar. how many timesare you divided? Looking in photographs for the cipher. I circle the backyard in the afternoon.Trample the parsley. He calls… Read more →
the snare of last nightthe tug of the present thenthe thing done five years agoin the canyon tomorrow’s dinnergoing badly already rootsprouts from small woundsI awake with many heads hungrytake showers at odd timesthese small failings lenticelswhere the atmosphere is exchangedI take shape in their languagea millennia of yellow flowers thenwilt the way I ruin the earthjust by livingwatch national… Read more →
PAIGE RIEHL: Thank you, Michael, for taking time to talk about An Incomplete List of Names (Beacon Press, 2020). I was so thrilled for you when I saw that An Incomplete List of Names was a National Poetry Series winner. Your manuscript Homeboys with Slipped Halos was a finalist for the Lindquist and Vennum Prize for Poetry with Milkweed Editions… Read more →
A boy (dark-haired, 10, shirtless) stands on the grassy top of a cliff.After a while, he begins to pick up stones to throw intoor at the turquoise ocean 200 feet below.His stones barely clear the edge and thendrop to the rocks below. He runs closer and closer before letting the catapult of his arm fling.Each time, the stones hit rocks,… Read more →
Did you get the kids to school? my ghost-horse-mind wants to know. The backpack zipper snagged again, I say. Did you take the path above the sandstone silt? asks the ghost-horse, Were you careful through the pocked dust-field, demands the ghost. I can’t remember how it was before the galloping, I reply. Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts! says the horse-mind. I can’t… Read more →
turn, and I will sprint desperatelungs over legsyour shadow a bouncing searchlight I need timeyour outline, your open mouthyou never let me hide in a gloam of juniper and spruceneedles and moss, damp patchesdecompose the controvertiblebranches alive with antsstepping in time onto highways of my hairmy belly aches to lie quiet, furnitureof bees, blanket of crumbling clay I want the… Read more →