Michael Prihoda
The peak of existence
in America
is being so beautiful
that everyone hunts you
America as the last thought I have before waking
the dream passes
for some.
a nightmare fire
not so distant.
attention span
burning.
the land we’ve amassed
is now shrinking.
“from dirt to…”
we’re about to find out.
You tell me
the laughter will come back.
it is all a series
of thresholds. they have yet
to demarcate
the gradients in
getting worse /
getting better /
getting older /
so when
the laughter returns
may we send
the sound into blossom
as one in a field
of rising voices
Later on, revisiting the deaths
in this, as elsewhere,
our stunted imagination
may save us from
from madness. a scope
of tragedy
uncountable by a child’s digits
at bath time.
if we held
a palmed silence
for each severed heart
needless & somehow
inevitable
we might never
speak again.
Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology; he is the author of nine poetry collections and the flash fiction collection The Hypochondriac Society (Weasel Press, 2021).