Also, in this issue, Michael’s essay on the work of Hayden Carruth
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Michael’s book of poetry and prose, Silicon Valley Escapee can be ordered from the publisher: Amador Books
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Email Michael
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For more Poetry
Michael Scofield
Affliction
Whether or not You are
or care, believing numbs
and salts the sting of watching the tips
of my sister’s fingers crack, hearing
her voice a hunted
crow’s the night she finally managed to go, pills
spilling from her hand at dinner like
daisies dotting her romaine. Did You
guide her slump
to the bathroom tiles? Was her muscle relaxant
Your holy bread?
Myself surgically split like butterflied
lamb last spring, cobbled together by grace or
thousand-dollar bills, I wince
to see the morning wind beat an Anna’s hummer
back against the patio wall, battling
to reach a penstemon blossom, throat and crown feathers
tossing like Fra Angelico flame.
Begging His Doppelganger
In last night’s dream why were you shrouded in white linen, pleats like flutes
on a mausoleum column, head lolling sideways, neck snapped?
Boding the end to thirty-eight years of kissing Clara good morning, rising to
rainbow my sunken chest in a red/yellow pullover?
False cheer? No more than grass greening our town’s garbage dump nor the
peacock blue we paid Bob’s Auto to spray the ’82 Pontiac my father
bequeathed us.
This morning I pick wildflowers for Mother’s lap, wipe slop from her see-
through bib. Tonight Clara and I dance at the Cattlemen’s Food-for-the-
Homeless Social.
Come tonight as a youth, okay? Linenless, playing the piccolo. Tell me I’ve
more time to build self-esteem through good works.
Hail freezing air. Hail cottontail shredding our lilac. House next door whose
motorized waterfall shrieks like my grandson, hail.
