Thrush Poetry Journal
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Michelle Bitting

Beginnings

When Job stands up to God
the poems tumble out.
Like the sun sees itself
wrenched from the horizon,

I know the best time to make
remains this fragile ledge
between dark and day.
I wake up early

and tread a thin precipice:
crank of the stove’s green knob,
the click, click, click
of a half-turn to the left

and the pilot lets
blue flames roar.
                        Auroras
in the domestic universe, iron flecks

falling into the gurgle
coalesce in a hot void, an unseen
industry of color,
the teakettle womb. This is the moment

I know myself best,
the rest still hard at dreaming
in rooms light years away.
An empty kitchen

where I’ve come to slap
my handprints on the walls:
paper, scissors, rock,
a child’s game of concealment

and revelation
like in the caves of Chauvet Pont-d’Arc,
where you have to not mind
breathing trails

of poison gas
exhaled from weeping roots:
trees in the limestone veil.
Where you have to walk

a cool humidity and silence
like a creature being stalked,
the animals uncaged
in the auteur’s cradle

scraping charcoal over stone.
                        Where
you have to stand at a distance
but close enough to be overwhelmed by

the prehistoric shape
of lions fighting in the sky.




Michelle Bitting has published work in The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, the L.A. Weekly, and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and as the Weekly Feature on Verse Daily. Her book Good Friday Kiss won the DeNovo First Book Award and Notes to the Beloved won the 2011 Sacramento Poetry Center Award and received a starred Kirkus Review. Michelle has taught poetry in the U.C.L.A. Extension Writer’s Program, at Twin Towers prison with a grant from Poets & Writers Magazine and is an active California Poet in the Schools. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, Oregon and is working on a PhD in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. 

Visit her website here: Michelle Bitting Poet - Home




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