Michael Daley
Lowering My Standards
Homage to William Stafford
It’s raining and in the lower field
daisies I left uncut
in case the bees thought it mattered
fade in waves of drooped petals white
as commas erased and strung
above the weeds I’ve been warned will catch fire
if the sun ever spikes past eighty
but I’m near eighty now and I mow pretty fitfully
so will put a stop to at least some
blue dragonflies spiraling
up in I imagine a whispered panic
out of the quivery milkweed stalks
where along the scribble of daisies’ last stand
a garter snake too busy to escape
drops a shadow when I yank the flag down
stretch out so my head tips north
and surrender to a nap
in a roomful of phrases
meaningless as happiness
the way it floods over me
when the fishtail of a vesper
sparrow’s song slides my way.
Crucify Me on Mt. Rushmore
“Stop Talking About Epstein”
Come hate with me, and follow my psychosis it’s American, wholesome, foolish like you O my
beloveds Come hate the rest of us, so sloppy and fat and flaming up in their hovels those shit-heels
dying somewhere else and not here, not like us, the way the truth and the light, we know what the
fuck we’re doing always and at all times we are the haters and healers there’s no other way to bring
back what we lost all those decades and presidents before me apres moi the great flood
I was there then
and I knew that sincerity and trust out there in some wild blue yonder mountaintop or maybe it was
on a prairie where our lovely farmers can’t hold their liquor where the people I love still spill soup
down their bibs like babies you Americans how we hate to love you let’s not let anything get
between us we are really the neighborhood and we hate anything that’s not like us so let’s get back
to it let’s get back to a good rush of truth on the soil where the blood knows only hate is for us and
those like us.
Michael Daley recently published Ground Work (Ravenna Press, Edmonds WA), his eighth poetry collection. He is also the author of Telemachus, a novel; Way Out There, essays; a CD, Frankie the Milkman's Song; two books of translation, and several chapbooks. He is the founder of Empty Bowl press, and the former editor of The Madrona Project. He lives in Anacortes, Washington.