February 2024
Bio Note: I reside in eastern Pennsylvania, where I used to run the writing center at DeSales University before I retired to a life of gardening, poetry, and house maintenance with my spouse and three cats. (The cats are not much help.) My most recent book is The Red Queen Hypothesis, and my next collection, Abundance/Diminishment, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in the spring of 2024.
Global Positioning
Somewhere between resentment & gratitude
there is accepting the balance. It may not
be at the most obvious intersection, the one
at the traffic light, may be off the main drag,
close to an alley or empty storefront,
but it’s there. If your relationship were
a neighborhood—even the map of a neighborhood—
you could plot out a set of directions like
some emotional quadratic equation and arrive
equidistant at a crossroads. Surprise! It seldom
operates that way. No, you have to detour
for construction or traffic or a breakdown in
the mass transit system and hie yourself
on foot in a less-overt direction, maybe
through the Methodist cemetery or behind
the public library, counting the blocks as you
shoulder your sundry burdens. They grow
heavier by the minute, don’t they? —though
you were happy enough to acquire them.
Where does the scale reside, and who’ll help
you calculate joys and losses? Look for the sign
that promises You Are Here.
Accidental Invalid
for Sharon
“Bedridden” hangs like a beige curtain between your
stunned body and the view where the tabby cat, sinuously alert,
takes in the long vista over tile roofs and cathedral spires,
that blue-gray range in the distance or that mass of clouds,
you can’t tell. Any light but dusk or candle shocks your eyes,
invokes the headache gods with their eel spears and clangor.
You think of your friend’s ancient grandmother and of Alice James.
Best to lie still, you’re urged. To your considerable surprise, you do.
It’s easy just to doze in the blanketed hours’ caress, sinking out
of what must be days though you barely note them, adrift somewhere
in the healing process. Is this moment Padua or Palermo? Those
muffled stutters a flurry of pigeons or shrapnel or motorbike’s putter—
you decide you don’t need to know, annoyed that your vivacious
energy grabbed its pack and left your slugabed carcass here to rot.
My dear, even the restless need to rest. Close your eyes. Tomorrow
you will try espresso; eventually, there will be wine.
Anxiety Dream
The subconscious tinkers at night
in the background behind
your steady breaths
like a small man operating
a large machine.
Demands are made, orders given.
You must search, without being told where,
through rooms you’ve never seen
for an object that is unnamed.
And, finally, the doors have been
locked against your inquiry.
The party responsible is invisible,
and your own intentions
cannot pass through walls.
You’ve been set up. The man
in the catbird seat is playing solitaire.
He hasn’t got a key or even a wrench.
The levers and knobs are shams;
he’s a false god and, he reminds you,
that is not your concern.
Your sole objective is to find
the thing you do not know
in the place you’ve never been
for reasons you cannot fathom.
Get to work.
©2024 Ann E. Michael
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