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: Notes Towards An Informal Elegy
a nurse at her desk said, as i walked past, your friend is very profane yes, i said, he cusses creatively in two languages *** your hospital … 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
Mike James: In Another Life
he wanted to be a desperado like in movies from the 1930’s whole world dusty, black and white he even loved the word desperado how it rhymes with bandelero how … Continue reading
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