Electronic Music From The Faroe Islands
1993
Brief montage of old presidents planting flowers
Ape blindly scotchtaping music together on piano
Rhode Island breaking off in the Atlantic
Me and your shadow breaking fast on the Slabs
1997
Beer for me, yes, beer for me, one for your friend also
A hotel’s purchasing power
The moon of the parking lot
Stranded in a palace
Each coffin dreams of winning the soapbox derby
2001
2004
Jailbreak your Tamagotchi
Pet your horse with a wooden back scratcher
Whip your horse with a bright red plastic pointer finger
Forget everything
Do you recall Betty’s photographica?
Her fraxiom?
Melon sorbet?
An envelope stuffed with aspirin and $5 bills
She spent that on the West
Kids grew funghi in their dark apartment bathrooms
Everybody was Colorado College then
When I returned to the scene
Their furniture was glued to the ceiling
2006
Tiny radiant specks are those horses in the distance?
Are we Portugal now
Little Kyle asleep in a strawberry
Seagulls at noon
We’re making paper out of wedding dresses /
Miniature books with a mohawk letterpress
Quaff the spritz
Break yolk upon rösti
Everything is alike in the sun
2011
Adapting to contemporary conditions
The hatred of tourists
The melancholy of the door to door salesman
He would like to quit science and write beautiful verse
Stone his brains
Go Desnos in the atrium
As beautiful as you are the tree is on fire
The tree is on fire from a distance and I must leave
Oral History
Father was an athletic
His father a crooner from Łużna
Gifted an accordion for communion
Played the public access circuit
Across Hamtramck
A sharp, aromatic daisy
Popped from his head
He stuck himself through windows
His flowers blew crazy in the wind
Among The Little Domes
Margaret!
Last time I saw you, you forked porridge.
Could I ask you, was it ever real?
It was expired.
I was expired by time I got there
and lied about how many gold teeth I had set.
Margaret!
John Hancock, please. Before you
leave your trunk in the sea.
I’m going to rip off my own face.
This place will pause, I will sell myself
and break into my house
where I will watch an antelope,
you’ll thank me for that.
You will never have an untrue idea again.
Millions of Your Potatoes
You’re my half orange
My Félix Fénéon
My former mayor
Ink blot on a hay stack
My smokeshaft
Harassed only slightly damaged
My pitchfork + rifle
Chinese watercolor
My nude Tahitian fruit study
Unemployed inmate
The whole falafel
Thinking of you holds two meanings
Some idiot child
That I am myself
Shooting revolvers off BMX bikes
Bloody puke humming
Just one of those days
Later inside the same minute
Our ghost can only be some little old woman.
Tossenaut
The barber is a crank “Lindsey”
Turns the nob of the music
Like a shelf on display
Slips me into a raincoat
And I appear on the easel
A razor, a clipper, erasers
Some trees under sky
Just behind us
The result is slow and gathers
Is painful
Look at me, all quartz
Look at me
Princess! All knowing!
∩
Timothy Michalik is a Michigan-born poet. They received an MFA from New York University. Recent poems have appeared in Annulet, B l u s h, and Luigi Ten Co, among others. They are the author of the chapbook Picaresque (Press Break, 2025) and co-wrote Poems We Wrote with Ian Fishman (Copenhagen, 2024). They live between Chicago and New York, where they edit and publish Copenhagen and Food.