From the Archive: Michael Prior (CAROUSEL 32)

Staff/ November 13, 2020/ Poem

MICHAEL PRIOR

Everything looking different, the night’s time took me

so I wandered a twisting a dive, the bends transforming me,
embolisms like diamonds hanging in darkness,
tissue turning grey, then clear, then fractured
with streams of white — the wings of a fly,
six legs perched upon warm skin
listening to the decompression
of meaning, unfurling iridescent
in my hand.

Michael Prior is a writer and teacher. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and anthologies across North America and the UK, including Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, Ambit, The Margins, Poetry Ireland Review, Global Poetry Anthology 2015 and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series. He is a past winner of Magma Poetry‘s Editors’ Prize, The Walrus‘s Poetry Prize and Matrix Magazine‘s Lit POP Award for Poetry. His first full-length book of poems, Model Disciple, was published by Véhicule Press in 2016 and was named one of the best books of the year by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His second book, Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House), was published in Spring 2020. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College. More: michaelpriorwriter.com

Everything looking different, the night’s time took me
appeared in CAROUSEL 32 (2014) — buy it here

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