MICHAEL MAUL - POEMS

Michael Maul lives in Bradenton, Florida. His poems have previously appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies in the U.S. as well as in Ireland, Scotland, and Australia.

He is the author of Dancing Naked in Front of Dogs, a full-length collection of poetry, which later became recommended reading for college students in the former Soviet Union nation of Azerbaijan. Maul has also twice been longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize (Ireland),
and a past winner of the Mercantile Library Prize for Fiction.

Birds Who Eat French Fries ​

They just don’t care anymore,
bellies distended, 
living like bums performing 
for tossed scraps 
and Tatter Tots 
in fast food parking lots.

They were made for better things:
to float on waves,
to search for schools off shore,
or perch above the Earth
to scan for signs of prey
they once enjoyed in former days.

But junk food birds have since learned  
to open crumpled bags, 
and with beak and claw
to dine on human throwaways.

Pizza crusts or Taco Bell,
Mickey D’s, or KFC skin and bones 
locked inside of Styrofoam,
these are the tastes of sophisticated birds
who took a gigantic leap ahead.
After evolving from dinosaurs 
becoming us instead.

​

Wild Pigs  
​

They cross the highway in a single row
like the album cover of Abbey Road,
then disappear back in time 
to their lives outside of lines.

​

Egg Water ​

I’m the grandson 
of a man that 
lived to be one hundred 
and two.
He made news 
in a birthday interview,
by crediting his daily regimen
of eating hard eggs then
drinking the calcium-rich water 
they boiled in.

I recall the smells
that his farm house brewed
the odor of eggs
boiled and steeped in living waters, 
which somehow protected him,
teeth and bones, to the end. 

Until the flickering began:
lame of foot, 
loss of words 
blind to light,
and finally one night 
gone.

After that, there was little left to claim.
Three chrome kitchen chairs,
pots and pans, a metal bed. 

And twelve old cardboard fans he’d saved,
with logos of different funeral homes, 
that buried a dozen of his friends.
All who died long ago
and drank not a drop of the egg water 
that everyday wound grandpa’s clock.

​

​On My Brother’s Blindness

Some things can be understood well enough
just in contrast to what they’re not. 

I’m on my porch 
in a straight back chair
on a starless night
looking forward 
to my brother’s house
down the street
waiting for news,

the kind that travels at its own speed,
but in no time at all
will amble up my steps.

Its variety will be the opposite of good, 
and it will be 
about the opposite of see, 
that has attached itself 
to my brother’s eyes. 
Turning light to dark 
when filtered through 
the crash of ruined retinal screens.

But there is hope: 
some light when snuffed can stay, 
drifting awhile behind the eyes  
like an extinguished candle flame.

For the first time him and me 
will begin to see 
the world we live in differently,
based on shapes and shades, 
and getting a feel for other ways, 
while everyday we search to find 
a side door in
to the opposite of blind.

​

Amish Girl    ​

The empty gum wrappers 
she throws 
suspend for a moment 
in the air behind her, 
before parachuting down
to the sidewalk where she’s paused. 

I stop to watch her cross the street,
then turn around to look at me.

Yes, I saw what you performed.
And also see who you’ll be, 
lovely wild Amish child
standing strong in front of me.


​