Frogs


In my mother’s old copy of Andersonville, which she has never read and doesn’t remember buying, receiving, or bringing home, I found a bookmark that consists of a laminated eucalyptus leaf with a tiny yellowish-green frog perched near the stem. The frog is about a quarter-inch thick, with dark eyes slightly larger than the head of a pin. When I showed it to her, my mother didn’t remember the bookmark either.

The fact is, it might not be a bookmark at all. For one thing, the frog is too thick to allow the book to close properly. And when the leaf is adjusted to avoid the problem, a disproportionate amount of it is visible outside the book. It seems to me that the frog and the leaf would look much better in a terrarium, or perhaps in a decorative dish near the sink in a bathroom reserved for guests.

What would a frog be doing on a eucalyptus leaf anyway? I suppose if the tree the leaf had fallen from were near water, the leaf might be discovered by a frog and maybe even used for a time as a barge. Imagine a frog hauling rare insects in tiny cages down a narrow stream, and other frogs meeting him at landings along the way to purchase his exotic wares. Imagine muscular frogs working along the shore, laughing, singing, and calling out to one another as they drag the cages onto creaky platforms.


Frogs

Like any frog,
at the end
of a hard day
I tie one on
at the nearest
sand bar.

I stay until
my wife croaks,
then I hop
on home.

To celebrate
our love,
I give her
eucalyptus perfume.

Ribbit on, she says. Ribbit on.



Note: Poems, Slightly Used, a growing collection of work first published in my blog, Recently Banned Literature, can be found here.






POETRY COLLECTIONS IN PRINT
Available from Cosmopsis Books of San Francisco


Winter Poems
by William Michaelian

Winter Poems (click to view cover)

ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4
US $11.95; $8.95 at Cosmopsis Books
52 pages. 6x9. Paper.
Includes one drawing.
San Francisco, June 2007
Signed, numbered & illustrated copies

Winter Poems displays the skills and abilities of Mr. Michaelian at their most elemental level, at the bone. Wandering amidst a barren world, a world scraped bare, he plucks the full moon like fruit from the winter sky, goes mad and befriends a pack of hungry wolves, burns his poems to keep warm. He is a flake of snow, a frozen old man, a spider spinning winter webs. Spring is only a vague notion of a waiting vineyard, crocuses, and ten-thousand babies. The author is alone, musing, reflecting, at times participating. But not quite alone, for he brings the lucky reader along. I’ve been there, to this winter world, and I plan to go back.

                                                            — John Berbrich, Barbaric Yawp



Another Song I Know — Short Poems
by William Michaelian

Another Song I Know (click to view cover)

ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1
US $13.95; $10.95 at Cosmopsis Books
80 pages. 6x9. Paper.
Includes Author’s Note.
San Francisco, June 2007
Signed, numbered & illustrated copies

Another Song I Know is a delightful collection of brief, resilient poems. Reading them, one by one by one, is like taking a walk through our common everyday world and suddenly hearing what the poet hears: the leaves, a coffee cup, chairs — and yes, even people, singing their songs of wisdom, sweetness, and light.

                                                            — Tom Koontz, Barnwood poetry magazine
Frogs
Also by William Michaelian

POETRY
Winter Poems

ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4
52 pages. Paper.
——————————
Another Song I Know
ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1
80 pages. Paper.
——————————
Cosmopsis Books
San Francisco

Signed copies available



Main Page
Author’s Note
Background
Notebook
A Listening Thing
Among the Living
No Time to Cut My Hair
One Hand Clapping
Songs and Letters
Collected Poems
Early Short Stories
Armenian Translations
Cosmopsis Print Editions
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News and Reviews
Highly Recommended
Let’s Eat
Favorite Books & Authors
Useless Information
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E-mail & Parting Thoughts

Poetry, Notes & Marginalia:
Recently Banned Literature


Collected Poems by William Michaelian
A Larger Life
Monastery of Psalms
Revelation
Friends (includes French translation)
Summer of Dreams
Hunger
Is It His Coat?
The Boy Who Wrote Letters
Forty Days, Forty Nights
Papa’s Song (clam chowder blues)
The Pilgrim’s Way
A Christmas Wish
The Teacher
The Literary Awakening of America
The Healer
The Enigmatic Child
What Happened to God
Reading Tristram Shandy
A Prefix of Obscure Meaning
He Knows
My Only Friend
The World I Know
We Do Not Need a Poem
Three Short Poems
The More We Are Looking For
I Hear the Earth
What Will I Give You?
Great Minds Think Alike
The Age of Us All
I Met My Spirit
Claim Denied
Summer Days
Greek Peppers
Another Hard Day
James Joyce Singing
How Many Stones?
At the Armenian Home
The Peace Talks
The Eggs of March
Armenian Music
If Poems Were Days
Once Again I Lied
One Last Thing
Everywhere I Go
Up Here On the Hill
Pumpkins
Winter View
What December Said to January
Winter Poems
Spring Haiku
How to Write a Poem, In Three Lessons
The Walls Have Ears
Why I Don’t Buy Grapes
To French Vanilla and All the Other Flavors
It Was
Early Morning Haiku
Someone’s Mother
Fall Questions
My Old Black Sport Coat
The Clerk and the Windmill
Roadside Distress, Part 2
Magical Realism (First Prize)
Café Poetry Night: Two Poems
Short Poem for Spring
Short Poem for Summer
I Find Him Eating Butterflies
For the Sister I Never Had
An Absurdist Play
The Second Act

Essay
Of Poets and Other Things

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