Michael Collier’s sixth book, An Individual History, will be published by W.W. Norton, spring 2012. In 2009, he received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Maryland and is director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
The Hybrid Lyric
Sept/Oct 2017
The Storm
Our landlord, a federal bureaucrat, would sit in his caracross the street at the end of the month to collect rent. He had a scarlet birthmark covering his neck and […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
Wind
Don't return to your four corners. Stay inside the lungs and thorax that once released you to the world. Move in me, so I can feel the pleasure of your […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
Rabid head
so ponderous, it must be the problem he can't solve: how to carry the bone-cage, the crash helmet for eyes, and raccoon brain, how to keep the flange-like cheeks aligned, […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
My Mother of Invention
The needle goes up and down on my mother's Singer, squat black with its gold scroll and script, shaped like a smokestack turned on its side. Have you ever seen […]
Poetry
Autumn 2006
Snow Day
It’s snowing and it won’t ever stop!In order for this to happen, the eastern tropicsof the Pacific have had to cool or warm. Now the sun’s not rising and the […]
Poetry
Autumn 2006
Lost Horizon
They would come, blown off course, in their wheeling,spiraling, then hovering, trash-like flocks, and settle on the weekend seas of irrigated fields and parks,like ducks on ponds too shallow for […]
Poetry
Spring 2006
The Missing Mountain
Cars could reach the mountain’s saddle,a notch between two peaks, and theresurvey the grid of lighted streets,a bursting net of beads and sequins,a straining movement cruising for release. “As far […]
Poetry
Spring 2006
Bird Crashing into Window
In cartoons they do it and then get up,a carousel of stars, asterisks, and question markstrapped in a caption bubble above a dizzy,flattened head that pops back into shape. But […]
Poetry
Spring 2006
Confessional
I was waiting for the frequency of my attentionto be tuned to an inner station—all mind but trivial matter,wavelengths modulated like topiary swans on a topiary sea—and not quite knowing […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
The Choice
What does it matter, the puddle of urine beneath the toilet he says he didn’t make but just discovered and is why he called you in? “What’s this?” he asks. […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
My Crucifixion
Not blasphemy so much as curiosity and imitation suggested I lie face up and naked on my bedroom floor, arms stretched out like His, feet crossed at the ankles, and […]