Three poems by Michael McInnis

Your Poems

By Michael McInnis

your poems radiated in the sun
with revealed truths
examined and crossed out
in the morning
your lips became
a thesaurus for my
fingers to discover all
the words of your poems,
all the words my
vocabulary would ever need




Score Bobby Orr

after the overtime
winning game
my mother sent me 
across the street
to buy her a pack
of smokes — I was nine
the crowded smell of 
Hy’s Drugstore with
its burnished wood
phone booths and Hy
always wiping the
counter because
he said we were
“messy little
bastards” felt
like stepping
back thirty years
only had
enough money for
the cigarettes
no candy
no coffee frappe
rounded up the
gang to play 
street hockey
we had candy enough
after I stole
silver dollars 
from my father’s
coin jar




Medals

We didn’t get a medal for
rescuing the Vietnamese
boat people crowded in a
leaking, shattered scow in
the South China Sea.
We took them onboard and
gave them blankets, water,
food, medical attention.
But they were yesterday’s
news, cast off and cast away.
We did get a medal for
rescuing Japanese fishermen
off Samoa after their trawler
sank. We spent day and half
looking for heads floating
in the water as if scanning
for coconuts, wet, black-haired
tips of icebergs, sharks feeding
below, sun melting above.
From a crew of sixteen we
pulled less than half out of
the ocean. For that they gave
us a medal.



​

 About the author: After spending six years in the Navy chasing white whales Michael McInnis founded The Primal Plunge, Boston’s only bookstore dedicated to ‘zines. He has published poetry and short fiction in 1947, The Commonline Journal, Cream City Review, Dead Snakes, Dissident Voice, Literary Yard, Monkey Bicycle, Rasputin Poetry and other little magazines and small presses.

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