Michael Lee Johnson
promomanusa@gmail.com
Bio (auto)
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His brand new poetry chapbook with pictures, From Which Place the Morning Rises and his new photo version of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom is now available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa. He also has 2 previously published chapbooks available at: http://stores.lulu.com/poetryboy. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Fiji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Israel, Nepal, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Finland, and Poland internet radio. Michael Lee Johnson has been published in more than 280 different publications worldwide. He is also publisher and editor of four poetry flash fiction sites--all presently open for submission: http://birdsbywindow.blogspot.com/, http://www.poetriclegacy.mysite.com/, http://atendertouch.blogspot.com/, http://wizardsofthewind.blogspot.com/
Author website: http://poetryman.mysite.com/
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The following work is Copyright © 2008, and owned by Michael Lee Johnson and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Nikki Purrs
Soft nursing
5 solid minutes
of purr
paw peddling
like a kayak competitor
against ripples of my
60 year old river rib cage−
I feel like a nursing mother
but I'm male and I have no nipples.
Sometimes I feel afloat.
Nikki is a little black skunk,
kitten, suckles me for milk,
or affection?
But she is 8 years old a cat.
I'm her substitute mother,
afloat in a flower bed of love,
and I give back affection
freely unlike a money exchange.
Done, I go to the kitchen, get out
Fancy Feast, gourmet salmon, shrimp,
a new work day begins.
Mother, Edith, at 98
Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace−
as yesterday's winds
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.
"Oh, where did Jesus disappear
to", she murmured,
over and over again,
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
"Oh, there He is my
Angel of the coming."
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Cheryl Snell
cherylsnell3@gmail.com
Bio (auto)
| Cheryl Snell lives and writes in a suburb of Washington DC. Her books include a novel, Shiva's Arms (The Writer's Lair Books), and five collections of poetry: Flower Half Blown (Finishing Line Press), Epithalamion (Little Poem Press), Samsara (Pudding House), the forthcoming Prisoner's Dilemma (Lopside Press) and the recently published Multiverse (GOSS 183). She serves as book reviews editor for Alsop Review, and blogs at http://shivasarms.blogspot.com and http://snellsisters.blogspot.com. |
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The following work is Copyright © 2008, and owned by Cheryl Snell and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Lover's Lane
Through that thrumming summer,
a tug of war waged in a hatchback,
a string of yeses pulled from a no.
The rear view mirrored the obvious—
the wrong choice always lets sorrow enter.
It persists like a hole under the scar's layered skin.
You tell yourself it's all over now, you're healed.
The car's been up on blocks for years, rusting
in the lot where you left it. Arteries of stars
smashed in a windshield, the radio ripped out,
wires dangling in your face like a dare—you open
the door, though you're in no mood for a ride
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