All these years, and the old bank building still blushes in the morning light, her stern face warming a color at a time. And there’s a story about her, with a rose, and a hat, and a ribbon, and a meadow. It seems in her youth she was wooed by the saloon across the street, where Granddad drank and talked and smoked. But her old man was practical: the saloon […]
Over the rise, past the cemetery, through the orange grove in bloom, on the Sunday morning side of the barn, the old rusted car your uncle drove, weeds through the floor board, cracks in the wheel knob, heaven’s own smell, the slowest kind of smoke. “Heaven’s Own Smell” Recently Banned Literature, May 21, 2014 . Crazy Old Widow The crazy old widow keeps a vineyard of gnarled old men arms […]
A trip to Safeway to pick up prescriptions for my mother: sunflowers, in six-dollar bunches by the door; rotten eggplant neatly stacked in the produce aisle; hard tomatoes and wilted bell peppers at prices few people can afford. And I think, There used to be a field here. Oh, what I could do with a field just a quarter of the size of the Safeway parking lot. The dreams I […]
We are the only beings intelligent enough to drug ourselves, poison our food, wear synthetic shoes, stay indoors, and breathe foul, recycled air. Poor birds! Poor animals! Poor dumb creatures everywhere! March 22, 2021 Canvas 990 August 6, 2017 . The Finger Sketches The finger sketches. The thumb hums along. Suddenly the thumb stops. What is wrong? The finger stretches. Is it the palm? The breath catches. The mind fetches. […]
Snow on the lilac — my mother has already forgotten that day. Poems, Slightly Used, April 27, 2008 . [ 1050 ]
old shovel from the farm / still loves / to look / for worms March 14, 2021 . [ 1048 ]
He had a perfect way of saying the desert had been crossed: Where water needs the flowers, we’re no longer lost. And there we laid him; and here grows the moss. “Where Water Needs the Flowers” Recently Banned Literature, April 11, 2014 . Copper In Your Palm Air so heavy with pollen and perfume, you wear it home. Comb it into the bathroom sink. Some settles on the lacy fern. […]
The reading ebbs and flows. Lately it has slowed to a crawl. Or maybe it goes on by itself while the reader is otherwise occupied — except that the reader often is not occupied at all. In fact, the reader’s presence should not be assumed, although his body may be, for it serves as a kind of bookmark in the story that is the reader’s life. A great many stories […]
An ice storm. Large and small, the trees and shrubs, draped with icicles and encased in ice, are bowing, weeping, cracking, breaking. Flights of geese. Flocks of birds. February 13, 2021 . The Hobo’s Ice Jar An old scraggly hobo asked for water. But my wife and I had no water, because we were in the process of clearing out the kitchen. The cabinets were empty, the faucet was missing. […]
Sometimes, as I sit here writing in the dark, I feel as if my hands belong to someone else working just beyond the veil — a parallel realm in which objects roam free of any given meaning, and the sound of a passing train — I hear it now — is that someone’s remembered childhood. “Arrival” Poems, Slightly Used, February 18, 2010 . Revival . . . and now / […]
William Michaelian 
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