The snake is a word unwriting itself.
Michael Cadnum
Michael Cadnum is the author of nearly 40 books, including the National Book Award finalist The Book of the Lion. His poetry collections include Kingdom and the forthcoming The Promised Rain.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
The Manatee
After the word is forgotten and discovered,
and streamed until it’s nothing,
she is not here.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
Renewal
The rain in the woods where the fire eruptedmonths ago is abundance too soon, or too late,the blaze causing harm long after.The promise is fulfilled,but not mercifully, the watercoursesdeepening underfoot, charcoal and slurry and soil.The water has no color. It is the empty placebefore the first wor
Posted inPoetry
The Flea
For him the truth is a flavor,a pulse made of nutriment,a living mountain of breath.Even pinched betweenthe fingers and released, he springsto perfect absence, beyond punishment,a celebrant of undetectable freedom.Cinder-speck, a vibrant fiend of punctuation,no bigger than a typesetter’ss
Posted inPoetry
Discovery
You can’t say hand without picturing either a rightor a left. You can’t think moon withoutseeing it in one of its phases.When the arrowheads riseto the surface after the winter rainsyou can’t say again. This is a first discovery for these individual flints.The arrowheads have
Posted inPoetry
The Crocodile
This ruse, enduring for days,will eventually cease, but noweven the birds mistake him for a log,or a stone the fleeting droughthas lifted above the current.Because there is a current, even in this cocoa-dark side-pool, and the solution to hidingso plainly under the sun is to glide asthe magnoli