At this late date, Verses strikes me as a kind of modern-day Genesis. Of course it’s a work of memory, and is therefore autobiographical. In its making, the images arose in abundance, each seemingly rife with its own hints and suggestions, until all I could do was hang on for the ride, thinking, If this is Genesis, then I want to read the whole Bible. But for that to happen […]
The dictionary in question is Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, published by G. & C. Merriam Company in 1924. It weighs just under fifteen pounds; the front cover is frayed and attached by only a few threads. I’ve since acquired older dictionaries, published early in the nineteenth century, in English and Spanish, and others of a more recent date, in French and German. Armenian, Japanese, and Russian […]
Another small collection of very short, related poems, The Poem I Wrote Is Glad It Missed the Train is a quiet mix of autobiography and family history. In the introduction, I say that each word is a kind of love letter, and I hold by that description. Certainly, each poem is. As brief as the they are, each contains much more than meets the eye, incorporating personal philosophy and nature […]
A child’s doll has died — such an innocent, heartbreaking image, easy to accept within the context of a dream, as is the doll’s resurrection. While it’s faithfully recorded from my own experience, the passage reads like fiction; perhaps that is why, if a child in the neighborhood told me her doll had died, I would believe her, and offer whatever sympathy and help she needed, even if that help […]
Upon returning to the short piece Dream Baby, I am pleased to see how recounting a simple dream, which was pleasant enough itself, leads to a passage of memory, which then transforms itself into a kind of poetic, universal love story. While I am the hairy old uncle and grandfather, I also embody the uncles and grandfather of my childhood, their whiskery familiarity and smell. In a sense, the dream […]
and this is the world in the form of a map mountains are knuckles and nations are blotches of failed pigment and this is my skin and that is where rivers run * I really do forget the drawings, and the poems. I call this a blessing — to be surprised, upon finding them later, and to feel almost as if they were done by someone else, as, in a […]
I can write about the poem, I can write about myself, or I can write about my mother; but it’s plain to see I can’t write about one, without writing about the others, which is why I wrote the poem in the first place — that, and the simple fact that on that day in 2018, it was her birthday, the fifth we marked since her passing. I did, in […]
My father died in 1995, yet I know him a little better each year, one quiet revelation at a time. This is a way of saying I know myself better, for the former cannot happen without the latter. How well he knew himself, though, I wouldn’t presume to judge, for he has surprised me many times, and will likely go on surprising me as long as my memory holds. It’s […]
I still rise around four in the morning, and I still enjoy a sip before dawn. And the time itself is one of stillness, and solitude. It’s not a big cup, but the coffee is black and strong, the way I knew I’d love it even in my childhood, long before I’d tasted of the miraculous bean. The cedar is now large enough to walk under, instead of having to […]
Having been friends with Glen doesn’t make me a hero. And yet it occurs to me now that, in the pieces I’ve written about him, it’s possible I’ve portrayed myself as such, as if my survival of his death from cancer at the age of eighteen, were somehow more important than what he suffered and the price he and his family ultimately paid. And, other than the fact that he […]
William Michaelian 