Poet: Michael Roberts, Orange County
Smalldoggies Poetry Feature #4: Michael Roberts, Orange County, CA
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100 Years Ago
We don’t even feel the rain anymore.
There is talk and little more.
Tell us we’re standing in the middle
of the sea and no one will believe you.
We’re tired already and it’s only been
4,600,000,000 years. Is anyone listening?
Nothing is coming out right. We got mutated frogs.
Strange nocturnal flowers splinter our houses.
I held down two jobs in every past life.
The world is a shutter, slamming in a windstorm.
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Her Black Horizon
Sun gone down
down. Low pulse.
People are worried
in their windows
that might as
well be candles
shouldering the wind.
The televisions take
away from sky
The hills stand
up and keep
standing up. They
don’t back down
shouldering the weight
of planets. We
not like they
are. We could
leave at midnight
not thinking of
the world, head
away from evil
light, our little
horizontal homes, electronic
sea goats blinking.
These are houses
we’ll never feel
inside in. There
is a book,
is an animal,
is a person
in the middle
of the road
we’ll never stop
for.
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Antlers
My eyes are glued to the antlers
on the wall. Jagged shadows stain
the off-white paint when my niece flips
the light switch. “What’s that?”
She says.
"Antlers," I say.
"What’s that?" She repeats.
Again, I tell her, "antlers."
Evenings pass like this.
Conversations go nowhere. I drink
my world and rewrite history. My beard grows.
World War 3 destroys the importance of text messaging.
A bumper sticker decries the soullessness of drum
machines, once and for all. Houseflies are no less
maddening than before.
We emerge standing in the middle of a log
laid across a poisoned river. In our village, they
sharpen their loose teeth to use as arrowheads
while a rundown robot performs heart surgery
in the medicine tent. An elk limps towards us,
eyes black with adrenaline.
"What’s that?" My niece says.
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Everything Has Changed
That baby looked right into my soul.
And swallowed it.
With its oblivious round baby eyes.
Lock of hair curled
over the twinkling forehead
it knows
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Michael Roberts is the author of the poetry collection No More Poems About the Moon (Write Bloody Books, 2009). He is trustworthy and, generally speaking, in good with peoples' moms. Recently he was caught on camera making change for someone on the city bus who only had a five spot. When people applauded, quietly he declared, Please, let these acts go unrecorded. I wish to be remembered as surly and mean. He once held Stephen Hawking's book "On The Shoulders of Giants" in his hands and thought to himself, I will read this someday. It was a pivotal moment in the young author's life.
For Smalldoggies Magazine, he is also: Rose Petal Ear.
He currently lives in Orange County, California.
Find out more about Michael Roberts at his website.