William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘The Asylum Poems’

A Familiar Stranger

They’re called The Asylum Poems for good reason. And as you read through them — each is but a few lines in length — you might see what I see now, almost twenty years since: a familiar stranger pacing a small room, each step a door, closed behind his back. You might see it even if you don’t read them. You might see yourself, too, because, if you look long […]

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The Asylum Poems

The Asylum Poems came into being in 2007 while I was taking care of my mother, who was battling Alzheimer’s Disease. The cycle of twenty short poems comprises the whole of Volume 15 of Songs and Letters, a much larger work begun in 2005 and completed in 2009. The poems were written early in the morning at my mother’s house, in a small bedroom facing the overgrown backyard. Fir trees, […]

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