Three Poems by Michael Prihoda

Doll 3[i]
 
what the sparrow carries
is weight,
 
is material
of no god’s making.
 
last week you said
“i won’t stay long enough to disappoint you.”
 
but here we are
two suns distant a belt of rocks
 
that drag us south
in up-facing pools,
 
our clothes burdened with receipts
from visits of friends at our most disturbing.
 
this week you said
“the idea of a finish line doesn’t negate losing.”
 
is it you or me who doesn’t find out
who speaks an astronaut from an air bubble
 
next
week?
 
 
 


Mask 4[ii]
 
retell
the witch hunts.
we found wizards
 
bathing in atomism,
unexplainable,
like the unreality broadcasts.
 
how far haven’t
we come? how far
haven’t we gone?
 
a muscle de-exercising
its right to clench,
mold a day around its axis,
 
spin a substance of decay
into an animal:
name it progress.
 
Benadryl
as gateway to sleep,
a former necessity as backseat driver.
 
nobody is turning
eighteen
in this age.
 
 
 


Mask 3[iii]
 
for these
times
 
of glass
& shatter,
 
to the deepest
parts
 
of me
where root
 
the acorns
of my better nature.
 
this light
has trespassed
 
enough to let us
know
 
we are more
broken
 
than when
we began

​


[i] Two stone pedestals stand at the corner of a wall. Brush & grass have begun taking over the stone. Masks hang from some metal fencing & doll heads litter the undergrowth. A boy leans his head against a brick wall to the right of the photo.
[ii] A boy stands, hands in pockets, to the right of a window. A woman sits beneath the window. A girl stands frame right, looking toward the window, wearing a bucket hat. All are masked.
[iii] A girl in a mask of a wrinkled man sits at a piano bench. An older girl sits behind her on a pew with an unworn mask next to her.

Bio: Michael Prihoda is a writer, editor, and teacher from Indianapolis, IN. He is the editor of the literary magazine and small press After the Pause. Publications of poetry, flash fiction, and art have appeared in Potluck, Rasasvada, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Spelk Fiction, among other locales. He is also the author of two chapbooks and five poetry collections, the most recent of which is The First Breath You Take After You Give Up (Weasel Press, 2016).

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