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    Flies
    Flies
    Flies
    Ebook92 pages29 minutes

    Flies

    By Michael Dickman

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    "Hilarity transfiguring all that dread, manic overflow of powerful feeling, zero at the boneFlies renders its desolation with singular invention and focus and figuration: the making of these poems makes them exhilarating."James Laughlin Award citation

    "Reading Michael [Dickman] is like stepping out of an overheated apartment building to be met, unexpectedly, by an exhilaratingly chill gust of wind."The New Yorker

    "These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings."The Believer

    Winner of the James Laughlin Award for the best second book by an American poet, Flies presents an uncompromising vision of joy and devastating loss through a strict economy of language and an exuberant surrealism. Michael Dickman's poems bring us back to the wonder and violence of childhood, and the desire to connect with a power greater than ourselves.

    What you want to remember
    of the earth
    and what you end up
    remembering
    are often two
    different things

    Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His first book of poems, The End of the West, appeared in 2009 and became the best-selling debut in the history of Copper Canyon Press. His poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, and he teaches poetry at Princeton University.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateDec 11, 2012
    ISBN9781619320215
    Flies

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      Book preview

      Flies - Michael Dickman

      Dead Brother Superhero

      You don’t have to be

      afraid

      anymore

      His super-outfit is made from handfuls of oil and garbage blood and pinned together by stars

      Flying

      around the room

      like a

      mosquito

      Drinking all the blood

      or whatever we

      have

      to save us

      who

      need to be saved

      •

      I whispered          To the rescue

      and sat

      on the dead edge

      of my bed

      all night

      and

      all morning

      My feet did not touch the floor

      My heart raced

      I counted my breath like small white sheep and pinned my eyes open and stared at the door

      Any second now

      Any second

      now

      •

      He saved my brain

      from its burning

      building

      He stopped and started the bullet in my heart

      with his teeth

      Just like that

      He looked down from outer space through all the clouds birds dropping like weights

      He looked out

      from the center of the earth

      through the fire

      he was

      becoming

      in the doorway

      and closed his eyes

      his cape sweeping

      the floor

      Be More Beautiful

      Whatever it is I was made for I haven’t yet started

      The morning makes its way up the street as a loose pack of wild dogs

      Their invisible metal teeth

      welcoming all the birds in the neighborhood

      and me

      The stars are wrong

      Begin begin

      I was just whispering

      into my glass

      pillow

      •

      Look it’s nighttime again

      I’ve been standing in front of a mirror for a hundred years

      My glass clothes tossed across the bed

      Trying things on trying things off

      There just there

      That’s as far as I can go

      Singing the one song I made up the only thing I have memorized—

      You’re a dog

      You’re a fucking

      dog

      •

      My body is a dream of meat

      It stinks and

      sings

      I dress it carefully and stick new Band-Aids on and take it outside so it can see and be in love

      I hang it up on a hook

      on a moon

      to turn in slow circles

      Open all night

      Are you open all night?

      I’m

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