Jessica Michael

5th January 2023

‘Trees Speak’ by Jessica Michael – FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art

We climb granite while my friend tells me of a man he knew.

This man wandered the desert looking for reasons to come home.

One night, struck, he found an alien

(this may not be true, but we’re by the lake now

and I like the story).


His first thought (which would not be mine)

was to ask how the alien found us, believing the planet lonely

in space as he was.


By the trees. Can’t you hear them singing?


Maybe he lied but I remember

the first woman who ever came across honey

in the li

ONE ART: a journal of poetry • 1st November 2022

The GO Order by Jessica Michael

They evacuate a town 20 miles south of here,

as fire swallows gully after gully.

I take a walk, count butterflies,

ignore the plume that smears

an entire quadrant of sky.

I try not to think about

the incompleteness of my bug-out bag—

toothpaste without brush, money without license—

the inadequacy of tires as lifesavers.

I don’t want to know

how twigs crack like bones,

how smoke rakes through lungs,

how trees are lungs.

I need my haven,

my nest of appointments kept.

They

Oprelle Publications • 8th July 2022

"Matter" Poetry Contest - 2021 Winners!

If one day you
drive across a bridge rinked
with black ice the day
after dreaming of your death

as my mother did

and it happens that the wheels slide
from underneath and turning
into the parabola fails
to arrest the guardrail—

Into the Void • 25th October 2019

The Brooklyn Miracle

Lazarus is tired of rising from the dead.

Jesus has started yammering again about the good old days. The good old days, Lazarus says. You always end up murdered. But he doesn’t hear him, never does. He is prone to nostalgia—Lazarus can see memories of the adoring crowds of Galilee in the shine of his forehead. Lazarus is tending his orchids, the shade of sky in August light.

One • 30th November 2021

La Llorona

In Las Cruces, 500 miles south of my father’s last threat
where everything blooming is crimson—
we take dinner at the hacienda.

Poets Reading The News • 14th October 2020

Self-Immolation | Jessica Michael

On a Friday in Philadelphia
1,400 songbirds stormed the windows
and dropped—

skyscraper casualties,
folded and clipped,
a passing broom for requiem

Red Fez • 7th July 2022

Archibald and the Mermaid by Jessica Michael

“I have known salmon to be particularly talkative during the full moon. The same cannot be said for tuna, who are notoriously closed-mouthed, so to speak. Unless, of course, one knows the right questions to ask about their ancestral history. They simply adore genealogy, and will go on for hours reciting bloodlines and the like. In fact, I once engaged a school of tuna in a discussion about a common ancestor and ended up missing the South Equatorial current to Brazil. I had to swim all the way to

Rebelle Society • 26th September 2017

Salome: A Retelling of the Biblical Story. {fiction}

Long ago, the story of Salome and John the Baptist was recorded in the Bible.

Legend tells that she performed the Dance of the Seven Veils for her stepfather, King Herod, on his birthday. This pleased him, and he gave an oath that she could ask him for whatever she wished. She consulted her mother, who instructed her to ask for the head of the king’s political prisoner, John the Baptist, on a platter — Salome’s mother bore a grudge against him for opposing her marriage.

This is how Salome beca