“Lives of the Birds,” (detail) by Suzanne Stryk, 2010

Believe me when I say
I tried not to apply deeper meaning
to ordinary happenings
like the blood that dripped from your nose
onto the splayed open pages
of the book on my nightstand
but we think divine
of the commonplace
to entertain and explain
to explore the connections
at the synapse
that abstract the direct
blur the narrative
into a form that takes new meaning
like the title page spotted
with dried brown blood
as if the American
who fucked his way through Paris
in the pages that followed
had something important to say.

Michael Sarnowski earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University, where he was a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. His poetry has appeared in Potomac Review, The Adirondack Review, Underground Voices, and Foundling Review, among others. He currently lives in Rochester, New York, where he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Read an interview with Michael here.