Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2010

dog star man (part one)  
Clayton Michaels

An agonist speaks to God about love
and other constructs.

She says I liked you better when I thought you were a catalyst.

*

Late winter, Year of the Rat.
Deadheaded flowers.

*

She’s walking across a blanket of snow,
trying not to break

through the thin top layer of ice.

Sometimes she struggles with object permanence.

*

A sprig of fir needles encased in ice.
A kind of melanoma.

*

She is, like every woman worth loving, already
loving someone else.

 

Clayton Michaels has been a featured poet at the online journal Anti-, and his poems have appeared in The Prism Review, Nerve Cowboy, kill author, Makeout Creek, Slipstream, and The Chiron Review, among others. His first chapbook, Watermark, won the 2010 qarrtsiluni chapbook contest and was published by Phonecia Press in late August 2010. He currently teaches composition, creative writing, and comic book-related courses at Indiana University South Bend. You can find him online at claytonmichaelspoetry.wordpress.com