All Over the Place: “A Witness to Your Life” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

A Witness to Your Life

She is wife to the husband,

Keeper of memoirs he will never write,

The exposed and the secret-sharer.

Even with life so small, unkempt,

Littered with rude manners and perfumed breath.

Later, if he saved the drowning boy

Or pulled the soldier out of the burning building

Or calmed the man full of slurs and bad skin,

It will only be that ordinary people

Often do extraordinary things.

All Over the Place: “Eight Breaks in the Glaze....” from The..Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Eight Breaks in the 

Glaze or If We Ate
Superstition for Supper

1.

I see exact replication in everyone, every tree,

      every landscape, every valley,
      in every thick mountain crag.

Birds know how to hate that way too.

All Over the Place: “Home” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Home

Potholed with devil sores.
He learned to tolerate them,
And now this: straight aways

Huge with speed bumps like blemishes.

“Everything is big there,”
They told him. “Be careful.”
And America was big. Big streets.
Big cereal boxes. Big windows.

All Over the Place: “Tunes” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Tunes

George walked the way he whistled. “That’s just the way I walk,” he said. No one had said anything about the way George walked. Everyone knew he was low key, off key, Ellison’s invisible man without Thurber’s Walter Mitty imagination. He married Sue two years later. She talked like a slide guitar and had the shape of an unrepentant electric bass. Together they learned the Nigerian kora, a quiet instrument, and had two children who did everything in the correct key.

All Over the Place: “The Set of Her Body” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

The Set of Her Body

I look at the set of her body, the style of range, the linoleum on the patio, the robin’s nest in the eave of the front porch, the wino sipping whiskey out of a glass bottle in a paper bag on the front stoop. She is afraid to go outside until he leaves. I go outside and sit next to him.

All Over the Place: “Water and a Lack of Wire” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Water and a
Lack of Wire

Stress lines are not the stretch marks of love

the way a man is more notable from the outside

as if chicken wire can drill barbs into skin,

bring the power of anger against the scrotum,

All Over the Place: “The Laurel Tree—Because....” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

The Laurel Tree—
Because Daphne Prayed
to the Gods for Help
When Apollo Wouldn't
Take No for an Answer

This is how magic works against us—

how being in hell is not always necessarily a bad thing—

how the odor from the man sitting nearby decomposes oxygen—

how the feral cat bites the hand that feeds it—

how newspaper headlines promise to lie

and skin sickness spreads into leaves of hair—

sorrow bends tears into strings of bark—

a minute slaves into an hour, the lecturer going on and on,

an hour becoming a day, a day a week, the pen out of ink,

the pencil lead broken, a time to sleep, a time to stretch,

a heart stone, the grain in laminate, rings of tile,

the number of seats in one row, the moon, the sun,

the moon, the sun, the moon, the sun, the moon,

clouds, rain, snow, frost, the moon, the sun, the moon,

the sun and the man at the lectern still speaking

clears his throat finally, swallows an imaginary wind,

begins to sing—the sweat of swamp, the swamp of musk,

a triage of lips/tongue/throat: an eczema of wood.

Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

All Over the Place: “Rootworks” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Rootworks

This is the length of tree

and this is the impression a tree makes of root

anaconda long, hooked buffalo thick, yak swayed.

Flame and earth broil over, wind throws out its back,

rain a thunderstorm without lightning, without darkness,

but thunder, lots of thunder

and later, rain a storm of darkness, without thunder,

but lightning, lots of lightning.

All Over the Place: “Beginnings” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

5AM and I’m working on a computer allergic to attachments and has a mouse in need of serious training; every now and then Microsoft Edge opens and closes a window as if the computer has a bad case of hiccups; spellcheck takes a visit elsewhere; and the screen is too dim—my cataracts may be getting worse….
    The second section of my Katy Trail book was requested by Amy Huffman, the editor of A Kind of Hurricane Press. I offered her a wide variety of writing and she decided ultimately what she would want to publish. Of course, I was flattered by her choices and, figuratively speaking, took the walk with her into the next section of the book. No more Katy Trail narrative.
    “Now,” she said, “poems to read over and over again to enjoy and contemplate.”
    Enjoy.

All Over the Place: “My Journey” from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

My Journey

Three days of hiking with only bottled water

is penance enough for one lifetime,

the path littered with opera and breath-beats,

the sarcasm of the bullfrog, the yelp of the red fox.

Every night enough stars shoot across the sky

to grant every wish for a hundred years of wishing,

every aspiration, every melody, every quarter note.

All Over the Place: “Truth” from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

Truth

In the end I did not hike the Katy Trail from Jefferson City’s center

across the concrete bicycle path over the river

down the asphalt road to North Jefferson (where the bathrooms are always locked)

to Hartsburg, the bed and breakfast, the restaurant of cold water,

to the place where the trail meets the MKT

and enter into Columbia, downtown, Stephen’s College,

arriving finally at the home of my children.

All Over the Place: “Before a Storm” from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

Before a Storm

Rains come with thunder and brilliance,

the pond fills with water, twig and turtle.

Frogs avoid it, but snakes come to drink,

and the King of Deer leaves its track in the tom grass.

The pond is a great success and water lettuce takes root.

I want to stay for many days to watch an egg become

whole and living and dead, but I cannot, so I write

about it instead in well kept journals.

Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

All Over the Place: “The Territories of Noncompliance” from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

The Territories of Noncompliance

The boundaries of disobedience

are not the boundaries of the great river,

no rain in weeks, it collapses

into the boundaries it has made for itself.

This morning the sky fills itself with granite,

thick and darkening, thunder and little else.

All Over the Place: “A Color to Life” & “An Image at Dawn”from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

A Color to Life

Breathe in a color.
Blue will do.
Attach it to green.
Open your eyes.

Let the blue and green blend to orange.

Let it transform into sunlight.
Let it explode into stars.
Let everything free.
Breathe in another color.

All Over the Place:“Observation Near a Cave” from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

Observation 

Near a Cave

The cave cricket falls onto the path some of the time

and does not know what to do.

The mole rises up for air in the light of day

and loses himself to a world of confusion.

Bend towards the cool shade, the moist underbelly of soil.

Can you not taste it? Can you not know a change in temperature?

In this direction everything bright and yellow, too smooth,

and in that, exactly how you like it, dark and comforting.

Take a break in the measure of things. Let the difference

come into you. Everything will be all right. You will make it to safety.

Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

All Over the Place: “In Indian Country....” from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

In Indian Country
Heat and Fire Rhyme

In the wash between the Missouri and the palisades,

heat and fire rhyme.

Sky has breath, water afterbirth, and down the graveled path

past cattails, marshes and poison ivy quagmire and film:

Synonyms.

Every stride, meter. Every bend, a new line.

The horizon, another stanza.

The small back of dusk, the white stream of light, a lake at dawn,

simile,

trees, shadow, wind against a shrouded sky,

earthbound color,

the easy scent of spring after a good rain,

perfumed clean bath water clear.

Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

All Over the Place: “Rhymes” & “A Meditation ....” from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein



Rhymes

Some inspire beauty, poetic rhyme;

others, decay and odor.

Wonder comes with word and action;

depression and destruction

the bath of broken skylines.

All Over the Place: “Ambitions”from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

Ambitions

All my life

the low stung tree on the hilltop,

the river birch near the stream,

one mulberry tree in a field.

White branches no longer able to hold a weight in leaf,

the birch dips its roots into water,

the mulberry plans its invasion.

The path lacks shade,

the path lacks humor,

honor a seed hibernating into soil until its time of need.

Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

All Over the Place: “Pilgrimage”from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein

Pilgrimage

I do not know who I am, but I do know

I am not the red winged blackbird scaling the tall grass near the road

or the snail slug attached to the undergrowth of a brick.

Nor am I the rat dependent on a prisoner for care.

Hard and fast I find myself, a garden gate swinging open unexpectedly,

All Over the Place: “Fragments”from The Katy Trail...

By Michael H. Brownstein



Fragments

l.

The dust on the path has not transformed itself to anything but dust, no rain for weeks, the sun a magnifying glass peeling back my skin.