NILS MICHALS



NILS MICHALS


The woman possesses some keys

The woman possesses some keys she wishes no one to see. She’s hung them on a ring of stirrup bone inside her left ear. They ring so beautifully at the sound of windchimes. The woman has a box the man would like to open. He has come to understand it to be like hiding within a glass conservatory of tropical flowers, a jewel box of another kind, a documentary of color so wildly chromatic the animals grow fond and freely share the cool of their furs. Have you ever seen a newborn lamb lay down with a panther? It is a terrifying, terrifying beauty, one the man elects never to be responsible for, for once he opened the box and a swarm of wine-throated hummingbirds spiraled into the sky. Once, out came merely a box’s worth of air into the air. Another time the man jimmied the box and a child came out. You get the picture, do you not? A key, a single key in the hand, lighter and yet not lighter. How else can one say this? This is the life the man has chosen. It makes him stand in a cloud-like way. At supermarkets. At post offices. At bounce houses spitting out child after child until eventually out drifts his own. It makes him want to walk over to where the teens with black lipstick and foxtail keychains incessantly smoke, so that he may tell them, firmly, that their bodies will never again be the same.



NILS MICHALS is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Lure (Pleiades, 2004) and Come Down to Earth (Bauhan, 2014). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK, Monday Night Lit, Posit, and Small Po[r]tions, among others. He teaches at West Valley College and lives in Santa Cruz, California.