Michael S. Begnal
Grab the Polaroid
Grab the Polaroid
and head down to where they spray graffiti
on brick walls
and piss in alleys
the canal flows nearby
clogged with dead leaves of limitless autumns,
sometimes with suicides—
I mean that wasn’t no dream
when you saw the police at the iron railing
looking down
or instead the river’s mouth
at high tide a vast black pool,
cormorants wrestle with writhing eels,
light glints
on rubbery scales
iron-blue beak
swallows alive
don’t drop off the edge of the
earth
Michael S. Begnal is the author of three poetry collections: Ancestor Worship (Salmon, 2007), Mercury, the Dime (Six Gallery Press, 2005), and The Lakes of Coma (Six Gallery Press, 2003). He is published in the anthology Breaking the Skin: New Irish Poetry (Black Mountain Press, 2002).
poetrymagazines note: Begnal's next collection, Future Blues, will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2011.
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