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
