When we remember a place, do we imagine it so clearly that if someone is there now, they will sense our presence, or in some other way be enlightened, moved, or disturbed? And do we know, similarly, that what moves us, isn’t caused by the thoughts or dreams of someone else, someone departed, perhaps, or among the living still? An Orange Question I wonder — has the owner of […]
Well, maybe it’s not exactly like that. After all, writing even a simple sentence is like navigating among icebergs. Each word is that beautiful and dangerous, with almost all of its meaning hidden. And reading the sentence is like waking from a dream to find a snake in your hands. But it doesn’t remain a snake for long. It dissolves into semblance and sense with a glass of ruddy-ripe juice, […]
Eventually I’ll run out of material worth saving. It might be a few weeks or months from now, a year or two or ten — I really don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is that I’m going about this project in such a random manner. I write as the spirit moves me, and when that spirit reminds me of something else I’ve written, I dig it up, and […]
The poems offered here are from my book of sixty-four short poems, Another Song I Know, published by Cosmopsis Books in 2007. The translations and transliterations are the generous, fine work of poet and friend, Vassilis Zambaras, author of numerous poems, as well as Sentences, Aural, Triptych, and other collections. Vassilis and I met online in the blog world in 2008. Within days, I felt we’d known each other for years […]
Faulty grammar aside, there’s more here than meets the I. But Emily Dickinson? What made me think of her? For Emily If the past is a flower, and has its seasons and dies, what of the seeds it leaves behind? and what of you, and I, dear butterfly? [ 159 ]
There’s magic in the old downtown district — the brick buildings and coffeehouses, the quaint shops and reading rooms, the moss-lined alleys, upstairs dwellings, dance schools, modeling schools, empty rooms full of derelict adding machines and typewriters, kicking through fallen leaves, inhaling the smoke of unseen cigarettes, the past, present, and future a grand composite, each patiently describing the other, self-effacing, a curious blend, the voiceless cough of a homeless […]
2017
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2017
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This is one of 730 entries that make up the daily journal and massive doorstop, One Hand Clapping. Each entry was published the day it was written on my first website, I’m Telling You All I Know. In that online version, the book was divided into pages by month. Atop each page was the following statement: The purpose of this daily journal is to see if I can find a […]
2017
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William Michaelian 