Michael Ryan is director of the MFA Program in Poetry at the University of California–Irvine. His books have won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, among many other awards. His new book of poems, This Morning, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in March.
Poetry
July/Aug 2016
A Divorce
for S. You say that you are leaving her. Life as it is shouldn’t be. Love rarely conquers, much less all. She doesn’t see what she can’t see. But who […]
Poetry
Mar/Apr 2016
The Mercy Home
Your mother died in fear. No one was with her. You didn’t want to be with her. The last time you saw her, two months before, while you were saying […]
Poetry
Spring 2012
Campus Vagrant
"I no longer privilege myself," he says, then makes his hand into a blade, a chest-high single half a prayer with my dollar he didn't ask for slotted between his […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Tribute
I can't give the king nothing but eggs, I thought waking up. Deeper you slept beneath the predawn light, barely a half-lumen all sponged up around you by the […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Rooting
The crowd's a bully with a bully's need: to crush weakness and see it bleed, to not feel the terror in the drive to thrive, to be soothed and […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Birthday
The years I've lost to selfishness bivouacked at midnight on my lawn, aimed an arsenal at the house, trucked in their dates, and partied until dawn. They all got […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Flimsy
Last night I got shot in the head as I often do: this one point-blank temple soft spot from the handgun of a man who broke into my motel […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Wings of the Morning
She says her heart is ripped because of him, and he might reply he tried to help her see before their life together stopped and then gave up: Just look […]
Spring 2012
Daredevil; Sabbatical
Daredevil
Although he’s only seven, you can pick him out
from other first-graders: he’s the one wearing
a smirk that says, “What are you afraid of?”
maybe also to himself, if he already suspects his fear
won’t ever be crushed no matter what he does.