Michael Pruchnicki Poems

Don't you agree?

They sit hunched in front of the monitor
solitary beings punching out their ideas
...

Once upon a time I lived
in a hut with ten other guys
in a village near Kaesong
north of the 38th parallel
...

Rereading Shelley's 'Ozymandias' recently
gave me time to reconsider
the glory days of Germany
...

I read cervantes' novel don quixote
in visitation grammar school

the good nuns knew I was not
...

Some think that a story has no place
in poetry - 'Put it in the short stories, '
he said, dismissing a poem I wrote
as a narrative, as though such verse
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If you can't use the vernacular
if you prefer rodomontade
to the precise inflections
of one who works at his trade
...

Mick was coming out of the kitchen with a can
of Bud in his fist, bellowing at Celia and the new
puppy at her feet when he stopped suddenly =
...

Give me Thomas Aquinas, scholar who grew
from a dumb ox in school! Ignatius Loyola,
who founded an order of religious warriors
...

after Rehan Hyder's 'Brittle Fidelity'

Brutal boots of dusk
chase delicate sunbeams
...

Of course you knew that your words
flowing freely through cyberspace
would be misunderstood
...