-Michael Bickford
We’ve said all the things that lovers say when
skin is wet but warm against the sheets;
when breathing slows to deepened sighs of bliss,
our edges merging embers ashed with sheen
of sweat; when language is no longer words.
The gravity of our bodies, still strong
enough to spark a star, can no longer
bring forth life from darkness; past the point
of no return to time gone through us on
its way to those we leave behind in love.
Yet press our shores together once again
we will when morning finds us finding one
another in its freshened glow as bed-
warmth turns our tides to heat and fire and light.
MICHAEL BICKFORD was born in Los Angeles and escaped north. After an extensive street education, he graduated with a BA and a teaching credential from San Francisco State University. In 1990, he moved with his wife and their two children from San Francisco to the unceded land of the Wiyot people on California’s Redwood Coast. He acknowledges the American Genocide and works toward reparations and rematriation.
Mr. Bickford taught middle school for 30 years in San Francisco and Eureka, CA. He is a fellow of the Redwood Writing Project of Cal Poly Humboldt and a founding member of Lost Coast Writers Community, Inc., and writes poetry and fiction in Arcata, California. His work has appeared in Abandoned Mine, Fauxmoir, Seven Gill Shark Review, Ink People Center for the Arts, The North Coast Journal, Behind the Mask: 40 Humboldt Poets on the Pandemic, The /tƐmz/ Review, and Neologism Poetry Review.
Last year he wrote, produced, and performed the one act play, Ali, Cosell, My Dad, and Me for Exit Theater’s Short Play Festival
His dual-language chapbook, Mrs. Silva Walks to the Azores, A Story in Ten Cantos (with Portuguese translation by 2023 National Book Award winner Bruna Dantas Lobato) is forthcoming this winter from Finishing Line Press.
Appeared in rainy weather days volume 1, July 2024