Morgan Michaels Poems

From a father's misery,
a mother's tragedy,
one brother's treachery,
another's irony
...

...she had long ago made the decision to be nice, she said, because it was civilized, and that was important, so they called her crazy, her children, because it was crazy to be nice, wasn't it, yes, I think so, it must be, and makes no sense, unless you hang out with people who've made the same choice, and WHERE were they today, these nice people who used to be everywhere but now seemed extinct, she said, using the word as if to invoke comparison with dinosaurs, and now, only her gay friends were loyal and nice, so, no, it was the world that had gone crazy and her children with it and not her, there was nothing wrong with her, except the balance thing and yes, she had fallen, and her shoulder still hurt and did I know a good orthopedist, she needed one to write a letter to get her back to therapy.

Fifteen years had left her little different. She was heavier, and shorter, but her hair was the same dark blond, only now streaked with gray, her eyes still refusing to be either green or brown, her nose beginning with Italianate promise but ending with Irish bluntness in a miscast, vegetable shape that cut too much nostril, reminding one she'd been stylish, once, but not never, ever pretty. Drawing a raspy breath, she went on.
...

and, sure, it got lonely, but she travelled, she went to lectures, she did...lots of things, she was reading the Iliad for the first time, trying to keep all those names straight, but what fun we all had, the French know how to live, there on the island, together on the deck at night, drinking gallons of white wine, eating pounds of pate, the sky so clear, not like New York, the stars so near and bright-with the sound of the waves breaking in the dark and do you remember the night we saw the satellite, a speck of light laboring across the starry sky, just us two, and everyone thought we were crazy and sat up and said 'where? ' and eventually they saw it, too, and, hey, do you remember how old Monsieur Riviere, who owned La Banane, and had such bad emphysema he could barely stand up without his oxygen tank, would lip-synch 'New York, New York into a soup strainer, pretending it was a microphone, at the end of each show, under the spotlight of a hundred flashlights, gradually turning blue? That was bad, clean fun she chuckled, laughing at her own joke, and suddenly stopping and beginning again.

Yes, it's important to be nice, and to live for others, she reflected, slowly, bitterly, as if fun were somehow the outcome of niceness, and but everybody loved Sid, because he was a perfect gentleman, and he had that certain something, such a good father and husband, he was, so thoughtful, and how he loved YOU, and looked forward to you coming, you little devil, he thought you were so smart, even though we hardly saw you the rest of the year, and things were never the same after he died- of what? - an unknown primary the doctor said, an unknown primary, but it was that pneumonia he got on the plane that killed him, you know, it killed him, and they never found the primary. Such a good man. The whole county flew the flag at half-staff. Seven years now, it's been. Why? Sixty-eight is too young! Such things don't happen, do they? Do they?
...

My, oh my, oh my,
how these superstitions vie!
...

As numberless, as inexplicably
as meltingly, as filled with airy grace
as solely, as various of face
as snowflakes that shake down from heaven's roof
...

Hoku- not just
eliminating the
prepositions, you.
...

Gallons and gallons of bubbly brine
liters and liters of precisely calibrated,
perfectly aerated saline,
I'm an aquarium
...

Look in me.
You must admit, my wrasse is nice.
There, the pair of ragged claws you might've been
scuttling across the floor;
...