Flies
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About this ebook
"Hilarity transfiguring all that dread, manic overflow of powerful feeling, zero at the boneFlies renders its desolation with singular invention and focus and figuration: the making of these poems makes them exhilarating."James Laughlin Award citation
"Reading Michael [Dickman] is like stepping out of an overheated apartment building to be met, unexpectedly, by an exhilaratingly chill gust of wind."The New Yorker
"These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings."The Believer
Winner of the James Laughlin Award for the best second book by an American poet, Flies presents an uncompromising vision of joy and devastating loss through a strict economy of language and an exuberant surrealism. Michael Dickman's poems bring us back to the wonder and violence of childhood, and the desire to connect with a power greater than ourselves.
What you want to remember
of the earth
and what you end up
remembering
are often two
different things
Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His first book of poems, The End of the West, appeared in 2009 and became the best-selling debut in the history of Copper Canyon Press. His poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, and he teaches poetry at Princeton University.
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Book preview
Flies - Michael Dickman
Dead Brother Superhero
You don’t have to be
afraid
anymore
His super-outfit is made from handfuls of oil and garbage blood and pinned together by stars
Flying
around the room
like a
mosquito
Drinking all the blood
or whatever we
have
to save us
who
need to be saved
•
I whispered To the rescue
and sat
on the dead edge
of my bed
all night
and
all morning
My feet did not touch the floor
My heart raced
I counted my breath like small white sheep and pinned my eyes open and stared at the door
Any second now
Any second
now
•
He saved my brain
from its burning
building
He stopped and started the bullet in my heart
with his teeth
Just like that
He looked down from outer space through all the clouds birds dropping like weights
He looked out
from the center of the earth
through the fire
he was
becoming
in the doorway
and closed his eyes
his cape sweeping
the floor
Be More Beautiful
Whatever it is I was made for I haven’t yet started
The morning makes its way up the street as a loose pack of wild dogs
Their invisible metal teeth
welcoming all the birds in the neighborhood
and me
The stars are wrong
Begin begin
I was just whispering
into my glass
pillow
•
Look it’s nighttime again
I’ve been standing in front of a mirror for a hundred years
My glass clothes tossed across the bed
Trying things on trying things off
There just there
That’s as far as I can go
Singing the one song I made up the only thing I have memorized—
You’re a dog
You’re a fucking
dog
•
My body is a dream of meat
It stinks and
sings
I dress it carefully and stick new Band-Aids on and take it outside so it can see and be in love
I hang it up on a hook
on a moon
to turn in slow circles
Open all night
Are you open all night?
I’m