Some mornings, before it’s light, I think of the first hen down from her roost, standing silently like a ghost in the yard, unseeing, waiting, unsure, solemn, surprised, and a little confused. It’s almost as if she and I have both been pressed into service by an unseen hand, one if not wise, then bemused. So what’s left but to join her? Or maybe we should consider an exchange: she, […]
In the brevity of my long experience — reading, writing, breathing, thinking — smoke is one of those magical words that is almost impossible to distinguish from the thing it represents. Like the sting of my youth and the gentle gathering of age, it finds its way everywhere, as color, in scent, in memory. And what I can’t quite fathom on the page because of it, I know the more […]
Almost all of the poems I write are completed in one sitting. But this does not imply hurry. It simply means that the poem is ready to be written, and that I understand the need to stay out of its way. That’s why I often say, I do not write the poem, the poem writes me. “And One” came about in this fashion very early in the morning on the […]
From a note written at the time: It’s interesting to me that my attempt to recall and preserve this dream — the doing so of which seemed important because of the presence of my father — would take this form, rather than that of a narrative, as so many of my other dreams have done. The fact is, that is what I first set out to do, but the images […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 ]
Dragonfly prehistoric blue these ants have made of you a church without a bell. Poems, Slightly Used, May 31, 2009 [ 87 ]
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 ]
William Michaelian 