Mike James: Two Poems
Shopkeepers whistle while they empty
Their shelves. And the darkness goes out beyond
The store front arrangements and the small,
Blue houses and the empty fields never fully lit.
Mike James: Reasons to Mumble
Because some vowels must be exhaled quietly
Mike James: Trying to Pray
Some nights I dream of hands holding water
Some nights they are a man’s hands
Some nights a woman’s
Mike James: Player Piano
Every song is like mice walking slowly across tin.
Mike James: Travel Ghazal
for Larry Give me a wash cloth and I will find a river to Dip it in. I will bathe in memory and in loss. Whenever the sky … Continue reading
Mike James: The Monk’s Couch
. Frank The Balloon Man Honestly, he hated children. Hated their laughs and the miniature gaps of their smiles. Hated the clutching need of their fingers. He hated the parents. … Continue reading
Mike James: This Life
. This Life Yesterday a half-built mansion. Open to rain, racoons, and a few young, stray vandals. Today a hunter’s shack, cold in the woods, where shadows gather around a … Continue reading
Mike James: Tu Fu, In Exile, In Middle Age
calm lake a mirror to the mountains at the center a fisherman’s boat rests tu fu, so long away from the capital, envies the fisherman and his net … Continue reading
Mike James: Marriage Proposal — A Found Poem
free estimate available inventory includes socks, shoes, books, kitchen utensils, tooth paste tubes, headaches, hard laughs, affection nearly always, sickness real and imagined, gravity induced wrinkles and frowns … Continue reading
Mike James: What You Do
where i don’t feel quite as crazy with all my obsessions, peculiarities, hang ups, and ticks with all my lists of what’s worked what hasn’t at the job, at life, … Continue reading
Mike James: Memoir
he wanted to be alone after a while was still, even without people there was light at the window it hung from a tree on one leaf … Continue reading
Mike James: Since You Left
my clothes don’t match the way painters and sunday school teachers say they should a friend told me it looks like you’ve given up trying i know what he meant, … Continue reading
Mike James: What I Know About Poetry
some things keep happening a rock rolls down a hill, bounces, bounces, rolls along makes a sound every time it bumps the dirt cracks itself and the silence … Continue reading
Mike James: Letter from the Islands on a Common Theme
at the bottom of one ocean sits a rock that hides another ocean at the bottom of that ocean another rock hides another ocean then another rock, another … Continue reading
