michael brownstein
Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published
throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café
Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review,
Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The
Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine
poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems
from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press,
2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once
(Ten Page Press, 2011). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam
(2011).
On Cooking
She is a patient cook
and her father writes an overcoat,
white shirted bleached and stained,
blood marks and scarred lines,
underarmed nests of burnt hair.
The small pot of oatmeal sings,
a fringe of brown sugar and cinnamon,
a curse of raisins and bits of apple pie,
a refrain stuck in gear, my brother and I
cut from the same yard of grass,
and my father slips into a short man
thick with heavy gray weight,
context, cocoa and nonconformity,
every substance a different thought,
every cooked oatmeal scent her perfume.