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WHAT MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME
by Michael Meyerhofer

June 16, 2021 Contributed By: Michael Meyerhofer

This poem was selected as a finalist for the 2021 MAYDAY Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Foldable Chairs
Image by Daniel Kirsch from Pixabay

The older you get, the less likely
someone will want to see you naked.

Stretch less. Don’t give into the desire
to stroll through walls because

it’s a long fall to the earth’s core.
Remember that everything puckers

out of nothing, which is God.
Leave a folding chair in your heart

should you chance upon a corgi,
a foghorn, an oak sleeping on its side.

You can’t heal if the knife’s still in.
There are worse crimes than tattoos

on the underside of a raindrop.
Frankly, I think you’re the shit

that grows flowers. If you can,
seek reincarnation as a telescope

so that wherever they turn you,
you’ll feel light kissing you back.


MICHAEL MEYERHOFER‘s fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. He has been the recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and other honors. His work has appeared in many journals including Hayden’s Ferry, Rattle, Brevity, Tupelo Quarterly, and Ploughshares. He is also the author of a fantasy series and the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit www.troublewithhammers.com.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Poetry Posted On: June 16, 2021

Further Reading

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(Translated from Russian by J. Kates)

How long have they called me to themselves These incorruptible black beasts. There was a time when they opened for me Not their jaws, but a door. They called out to me, not as a friend, But as a shepherd, a laborer, To lend a hand. And I learned little By little to be equal […]

SUMMER by Robert Walser (translated by Daniele Pantano)

In summer we eat green beans, peaches, cherries and melons. In every sense nice and long the days form a sound. Trains travel through the country, flags flap merrily on rooftops. How nice it is in a boat surrounded by gradual heights. The high peaks still wear snow, flowers give fragrance. On the lake you […]

Bowl
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there is little we cannot accomplish without hearing our voices the music of not hearing voices not music but an atmosphere of existence   a bowl of still water with white yellow orchids curled in a gesture of tenderness across its open mouth silence over original silence which invites the hum of phenomena   shoring […]

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