Bent on naming “the great house of stone,”
J. Theodore lost his head. Hell-bent
on the turbulent task of draining
blood from stone, Richard Nicklin Hall
lost his heart. What is done in the dark…
Under the watchful eye of the Bateleur,
the cognitive tusks of elephant phantoms
unearth the bones of Bantu chieftains
—that summoned Peter Garlake to right
a light-sensitive wrong. There are no
songs of Solomon to date the cuboidal
bracelet of gray clay, nor any clear prints.
But where a marvel stands against
the teeth of time, beauty bears a mark.

—

Myron Michael is a publisher, recording artist, and writing teacher. His poetry appears in a number of journals including Nanomajority, Toad Suck Review, Harvard Review online, Eleven Eleven, Cave Canem XII, Spillway, Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (City Lights, 2009), and Fourteen Hills. His chapbook Scatter Plot won the 2010 Willow Books Integral Music Chapbook Prize, and he is co-author of Hang Man (Move Or Die, 2010). Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he considers the Bay Area, CA his second home.