2017
Canvas 967
[ 92 ]
Now and Then
About twenty years ago, I wrote a story about an old woman who died in a library. Had I taken this approach, maybe it wouldn’t have been rejected so many times — not that this piece is necessarily any better, but one never knows. Of course, twenty years ago this approach would never have occurred to me, as back then I was still struggling with occasional bouts of sanity. […]
2010
Is black the thread that keeps these stars fastened to my coat?
Nevermore
[ 90 ]
Nevermore
An Hour from Now
Here’s another poem I’d forgotten about entirely, but it strikes me as one I should save. Appearance, sound, meaning — all are in harmony. And try though I might, I can’t find an unnecessary word. This goes to the heart of my writing philosophy, in poetry and prose alike. In economy, there is wealth. I see too that “An Hour from Now” was written just a few days before the […]
Starting Over
The ritual drowning of poems only to turn your back on that muddy river and find a halo around an apple tree up to its bough in sin. Poems, Slightly Used, April 30, 2010 [ 88 ]
Ruins
Dragonfly prehistoric blue these ants have made of you a church without a bell. Poems, Slightly Used, May 31, 2009 [ 87 ]
Shore Birds
For the past several days, the valley we live in has been full of smoke from wildfires burning north, east, and south of us. For a short time yesterday, we escaped to the ocean to breathe. Shore Birds About the ocean, I can’t quite decide. Is it relentless, or does it have something to hide? Is helplessness its plight? Is it mine? A man with a kite — in […]
From a distance, he probably looks like an old tree stump
in a drained lake bed, but from here, a bust preparing for takeoff.
Or maybe he’s just landed? Half thought, half drought?
Canvas 1,225
[ 85 ]
Canvas 1,225
Sweet Blue Smoke
Let me tell you, it’s no easy thing coaxing these out of the brambles. You’d believe me, if you could see the blood on my arms, and the thorns. Sweet Blue Smoke Now, let’s say you aren’t here, and that what’s happening to you is what’s happening to everyone, and that they aren’t here either, and that this is togetherness, and that togetherness is another word for solitude, and […]
2017
Again and again, while sifting through old drawings,
I find myself stopping at this face. Or maybe I simply find myself.
Canvas 840
[ 83 ]
William Michaelian 
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