The old hickory dropped Nut-brown seeds that we’d smash Our fingers trying to crack – the filled dirt innards Became our pretend dinner before Dad bandaged up the bloodied tips. Now it’s dead and dead cold from Standing in the Florida heat with no Blanket or break from its production. The fallen branches were chainsawed to Smoker bits at Christmas or Labor Day. We never thanked it with water or words For the shade and meals and memory-wounds. Mushrooms have invaded our yard Except the patched dirt that’s been Driven on for far too long. Nothing lives there. Nothing lives long enough for our children’s children anymore. We dig and build atop and strip the soil before it’s passed on. The flowers he gives his wife – when a newborn is Borne by her alone for twenty odd years – wilt and crumble within a week.…
I come from the home of a very great painter. In fact, I was painted by him and am a representation of him. I am what is called a self-portrait. And my painter is the distinguished and famous Rembrandt Van Rijn, who thought so much of himself that he called himself by only one name, Rembrandt.
In fact, you could say that since I am a self-portrait, I, too, am Rembrandt! At least I like to think of myself that way.
I have often wondered why I came into this world. Rembrandt, my creator, had gone through a lot in his life. He had used painting to study himself. He was a fine painter, perhaps the best in Amsterdam. But before he painted me, he had encountered many difficulties.…
Prize-winning poet Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection is Abundance/Diminishment, and her book The Red Queen Hypothesis won the 2022 Prairie State Poetry Prize. She’s also the author of Water-Rites (2012) and six chapbooks, and she maintains a long-running blog. In this interview (conducted by writer Ian Haight), Michael discusses her experiences as an American undergraduate educator, as well as the impacts of technology and her recent residency at Joya, Spain, on her writing.
You’ve recently retired from a career in academia, and you worked primarily with undergraduates—especially those new to a higher education environment. How do these students tend to value literature and creative writing, and how has this valuation changed over time?
My university job mainly took place in the context of academic support for students deemed “at risk” of not persisting to a degree.…
For someone who bragged about their off-campus apartment, hers sure had a lot more roaches than mine. A small red one skittered near my feet, and I jumped back.
Lainey opened the door. “Hey girl,” she said. The phrase lacked its usual cheeriness.
“Hey,” I said, walking in.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “We needed to talk.”
She was being all quiet and squirmy, like the tension in the air caused her physical discomfort. She didn’t just express her emotions, she wore them, like a flashy accessory that everybody had to see.
Because we were fighting, I didn’t know if I should assume my typical spot in her green armchair, so I stood awkwardly beside it. I watched her shuffle into her kitchen.
I crouch in leaves and needles under pines and water oak. I crashed my way to this place through the saw-vines and mimosa avoiding poison ivy and backyards. Vibration
escalation, terror of arrival, noise and bulk and overwhelming joy, blur and roar and clack and whistle fast and loud and large receding sudden. Fading, gone.
The noise of startled birds returns, and the sound of my own breath. After long enough, I rise, lift my weight on steady hands and feet.
No rails for me no predetermined route marked out on maps. No tickets and no whistle. Crunch of footsteps chosen, breath. The scratch of nails on trunks of trees and long-discarded glass and rusted metal.
Times crashes into me at the crossing but I will just bend like the river.…
they tell me I cannot donate, stamping the word ……………..REJECTED in red across my wrist like a branding iron, but less superficial. I had felt an obligation to sign up, because I was a universal donor—a term which, I recognized, was quite ego-inflating; ……………..perhaps, I mused, I could play savior, and be needed, and be one of many. I thought there might be something poetic in seeing the blood move from one shriveled bag to another, ……………..skin like plastic and vice versa, or at least, I figured it’d make me a better poet, to say my heart had beat outside of me; yet, in the reflection of fluorescent ……………..lights on the linoleum floors I saw ……………..……………..my resolve begin to crumble.…
Elsie sat at the table in the dining room where she was assailed by Polly, the manager of the nursing home where we lived. “You didn’t finish your beets,” Polly said. She was in her thirties, with hair of straw and a face lined beyond her years.
“I don’t want them,” Elsie said.
“But they’re so good,” Polly said, rubbing her stomach as if proof of their goodness.
“I said I don’t want them.”
“You must eat, dear, to keep up your strength.” Polly leaned in, near Elsie’s face, as if a familiar, family, an old friend, when she was none of the above.
“I don’t care,” Elsie said, and promptly overturned the saucer of beets. The juice ran down the table and dripped onto the threadbare carpet beneath.…
