Graveyard Shift Straw Boss, RJ Reynolds

Now you get this
and you get it good

you nicotine pocked hack
reared asinine son

of a dung-reeking hump-
back Camel sucker,

that was the last
straw--

now, drag that
sorry butt-

smoking carcass
to the meat wagon--

pack it in, Slim.

Cracks in the Sidewalk: Delmore Schwartz, American Poet (1913-1966)

So rich

a mainstream his
precocious

school of thought:

returns

rapidly diminishing
recesses skip-

ping the side-
walk

where the fault-
line breaks

a mind mid-
stride

. . . .

by the road to the contagious hospital
and elsewere?

the pure products of America
go crazy--

Doc Williams spelled it out, Delmore,
but you could not

. . . .

be faultless be
wary daddy suspicious

fissures crack
the poor

mind open daily
don't let them

take in that child-
like heart

to night.

(First published in Poetry Salzburg Review #3, Autumn 2002)

Lesson in Piety

Observe then,
If you will

My child,

How when
Drinking water,

Even the lowly
Chicken will

Lift up its face
To face

God.

Inscrutable

Memory lives the moment

That moment's left it.



(from The Intricate Evasions of As)

Recently received: I first became aware of William Michaelian when I replied to a post he had sent to Ron Silliman's blog about a month- and-a-half ago (thanks Ron for being the unwitting go-between); in the meantime, we've exchanged each other's books and maintained a sporadic email correspondence. For those unacquainted with Michaelian's poetry, I know that after reading Winter Poems and Another Song I Know, winter--and the short poem--will no longer be just another song you know.

Inheritance

Every winter,
we pruned
the same
long
rows
of
vines.

Now we're older,
some of us have died.

I see the vineyard in my mind:
the brush is tangled, leafless, waiting.

Winter Poems

It helps to know
that I can burn them
to keep warm.


Both books available for mind stoking at Cosmopsis Books.

Dedication

Here's to that

spunky little green stink
bug blinded

by the treacherous

light and dropped
onto my key-

board with me straining
after one more

sweet-smelling charming moving death-
less line--O dear life-

less little bugger, thanks
for taking the time, for trying

to stop me smack in time,
sorry for this too,

too precious rhyme.

Featherweight

for
aging

spar

row
in

the
sparse

spar
row

grass,
spar

ring
in

the
wind,

who's
going

to
win?