Nine Ways to View a Bully

Michael H. Brownstein

1.

It is our nature to stop and view the lightning.

2.

Stones, too, can be named

3.

The biggest mouth belongs to a fish.

4.

When you run with garbage, you begin to stink.

5.

Rape is not always a physical act.

6.

The man you think you break may be the one who owns the glue.

7.

Everything will come, my friend, on the wind or in a storm, on feathers or rust.

8.

The best way to view a bully is from a distance and off to the left.

9.

Perhaps all that is needed is a tree.

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Driftwood

Michael H. Brownstein

These are the names of all of my days.
I sit on the tree trunk in front of the vacant store on 43rd,
The elevated terrible and angry, squeals to a stop.
Standing near the fence for a century or more under the mist of rainbows,
I watch the workers in the distant fog harvesting crosses.

Quiet sympathy,
Every tone of skin a variance of depression gray,
Every knitted muscle more convoluted than its companion piece,
All of the ragweed eating into the lining of my nose
The very seed that feeds the song I like most.

Field workers assemble the wood,
Framing one piece to another,
Whitewashed and hammered shut.
Fog thickens and thins, turns and rises.
Every distant shape, every piece of driftwood.

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Love and Movies

Michale H. Brownstein

“I don’t like movies that make me sweat,” she says and she smoothes her blouse with her right hand.
Her fingers play with her hair. She is not sitting on the seat. She is not touching it. She is just there, standing near it: It is hers.
“Movies should be happy,” and she pulls out a small journal, closes her eyes with fierce anticipation, licks the tip of her pen, jots down a couple of lines. “Love should be, you know, lovely.”

 

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