Whisperer’s note: Michael was a friend of mine who passed away 19 months ago, and he was one of the sweetest, most generous poets I ever knew in my life. I miss him everyday.
SOMETHING FLASHES The Storm when it rains streams run down asphalt onto highway into drain Sargasso swirls under suburb pine needles putrid foam filtered at sewage plant pumped out beyond fishing pier into the sea The Dream red crabs with a snowman’s face and hat scurry over kitchen table then divide into poisonous black centipedes, split into slugs I have a shiny butcher’s knife I cut them to pieces The Movie the headless usher leads me out of the morning matinee I follow an arthritic man with six legs across the sunny avenue The Piano mother was playing piano when I fell among wood crates of cola bottles stacked against the wall by the refrigerator in the laundry room she carried me screaming from the broken glass past the sandbox through a forest of schefflera to the doctor’s house next door he took us in his gray car littered with antiseptic cotton swabs and tongue depressors to St. Francis Hospital on Indian Creek Drive, where the surgeon sewed me up now when the story of scarface and 52 stitches is told, I remember the sandbox, schefflera, and bloody swaddling but the piano, my mother says, there never was a piano. The Prophecy I sell rain to pine cones and lichens to soggy branches drops slop off rusty gutters roofs leak something flashes by that was my life why wasn’t it clearer? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Rothenberg was an American poet, songwriter, editor, and active environmentalist. Born in Miami Beach, Florida, Rothenberg received his Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Afterward, he moved to California in 1976, where he began "Shelldance Orchid Gardens", an orchid and bromeliad nursery. In 2016, Rothenberg moved to Tallahassee, Florida. In 1993 he received his MA in Poetics at New College of California. In 1999, Rothenberg and artist Nancy Davis began Big Bridge Press, a fine print literary press, publishing works by Joanne Kyger, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen and others. In 2011, Rothenberg and his partner Terri Carrion co-founded 100 Thousand Poets for Change. 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a global poetry and arts movement with an emphasis on peace, justice, sustainability and education. Michael passed away of cancer in November of 2022. -------------------------------------------------------- PROMPTS: 1. Write 3-6 short vignettes (50-200 words) about 3-6 random moments in your life, which can be real life or dreams, separately or combined. 2. Write 3-6 journal entries from your life, without dating them, and out of chronological order. 3. Write about a memory you have that your friends and/or family remember differently, and write about that difference.