Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).
He is on Twitter at @michaelprihoda
i want
to see a judge
that you might
have my body.
you have angled my mind
through subterranean hours.
tricked my brain into
fearing space.
look at my
hands.
if, then,
you stay
rigid-faced
when that Arab dust
swirls
about the barbed-wire,
i’ll look █████
in the eyes,
whisper “it
is finished.”
Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).
He is on Twitter at @michaelprihoda
i am accused,
the distance
immaterial.
North Africa
is not Los Angeles.
it is certainly not
Vancouver.
you seem
to write history
for the rest
of us.
but
you can’t
fuck
with my
geography.
Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).
He is on Twitter at @michaelprihoda
Contains violent imagery and references to torture
“you’ll let
me go
if i give
you the name
of a Middle-Eastern
man
i once knew?” even
if he drowned
in the Black
sea?
you bring
the bucket back.
“if you’re not
a terrorist,
surely you
know a terrorist.”
it becomes
hard to breathe.
i am back
in the womb.
more than water
makes this unspeakable.
“if you’re not
a terrorist,
surely you’ll
give up terrorists.
save yourself.
why won’t you save yourself?”
don’t you see?
every breath
of water
brings heaven closer?
Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).
He is on Twitter at @michaelprihoda
