May 2016
I studied and practiced martial arts almost fanatically when I was a teenager but injured my back when I was fifteen. I started writing poetry and by the time my back healed, I decided to be a poet rather than the next Bruce Lee. Since then I’ve published four collections of poetry and received recognitions such as a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. You can keep up with my work at www.michaeltyoung.com.
The Oppressor’s Suit
My wife cut three peonies from the garden, forcing
a tall glass into service as a vase
and here in the living room they lean over its rim.
Elegant tyrants, they bend everything
to their attention, rewriting
the history of our apartment as if the whole room
was about them. Look at all those white petals
layering complexities, suggesting a significance
vague enough to recast
a whole lexicon, robbing me of every other word
I might use to describe them, except the popular bag
of clichés: beautiful, delicate—which I recite to myself,
even as I realize how easily I could destroy them,
that one heavy breath could send the petals off
in a panic. But instead, I stroke them,
surprised how cool they feel in the room’s humidity,
how all those robes don’t stifle them,
but hint of snow and ice, of weathers
wholly beyond them, as if they clothed
in their thick folds,
the intricate shape of their own undoing.
©2016 Michael T. Young