I clench the pipe between my teeth. No tobacco. I think about a trip to the store, the fine aroma of a newly opened pouch. But I don’t get up. Instead, I light an imagined match with the flick of a nail, and then I puff and inhale, puff… and… inhale. The store is a little place on the corner in an undiscovered country. There’s a bell on the door. […]
A beggar with a wide flat back, bent to tie what’s left of his shoes, laces foul, nails gone, smelling for all the world like human rust, and I, a lamp post anchored to this spot, painted like a song to resemble steel, desperately in need of hands. Poems, Slightly Used, October 10, 2010 [ 72 ]
Papa, 1908
This is my father’s father, from a large photo-portrait taken when he was twelve, about two years after his arrival in this country. Since to a surprising degree this picture shows the way I think, I might attempt more of these strange collages.
Penny Thoughts and Photographs, August 6, 2009
[ 71 ]
Somewhere between 1965 and 1968, a box of fifty Santa Fe Fairmont cigars cost eight dollars at the liquor store next to United Market. The price for a transistor radio battery was nineteen cents — three cents more than a single cigar. I was too young then to buy cigars. But I smoked them, indirectly, when my father lit one. Back then, he smoked several a day. But he quit […]
While writing One Hand Clapping, I once made the funny suggestion to myself that I follow the book with another, and call it The Other Hand Clapping. Had the second book been written, it might have contained the following entry from Recently Banned Literature, which records a chance meeting just as it happened. The Other Hand Clapping We met in the library lobby outside the Friends store. “Bless you,” […]
I think I remember hearing many years ago that my grade school friend and neighbor, Edwin, was bitten by a rattlesnake in the foothills east of our little hometown in California. But I have no idea who might have told me, and I haven’t seen Edwin since before then. The last time was in 1975, in the bowling alley at the student union at the university in Fresno. He was […]
2011
Canvas 220
[ 67 ]
To open a watermelon, we must first choose a place for the door. Remember: there will be no handle, no lock, no bell — only light, and a thumping sound sure to call children — a split and a crack like a limb or a shack weighted with ice in the winter. Out back is the mind. Leave it behind. This is no time for thinking. And what do we […]
2011
The birches and firs give us just enough light
through a south-facing window.
Someday, casually or with infinite care,
someone will take us down.
But we will still be here.
And you will hear our song.
Canvas 194
[ 65 ]
2011
I, Leonardo, have but one more thing to say:
no day is just as you imagine — no world, no man,
no mortal lump of clay. Life is a blind wind
that devours words and bones. It is a fervent hope,
the breath of breath itself, a poison that is
its antidote. Flesh of my flesh, child of my child,
learn this song and sing it well. We are orphans
on this road. Our triumph is to be alone.
“I, Leonardo”
Songs and Letters, September 30, 2006
Another Song I Know, Cosmopsis Books, 2007
Canvas 178
[ 64 ]
William Michaelian 