Michael Kriesel's poem "Mineral Kingdom" was published in issue 295.2, Spring 2010. Michael was also the 2015 James Hearst Poetry Prize winner.
Notes from the author:
"Mineral Kingdom" comes from an 18-month period during which I wrote 72 Abecedariums & Double Abecedariums, all with a metaphysical / occult theme. I was working 4 hours each evening as a janitor in a small rural elementary school, a job intentionally chosen for its low mental stress. The rest of my my day was writing / revising / reviewing / etc...all the bureaucracy that attends writing. After that year and a half period, I found myself surprised to be decompressing from the mental stress of the prolonged period of intense creative activity.
Mineral Kingdom
Angleworms as an abstract alphabet,
blacktop wet. Phone lines repeating blackbirds,
calling me. A corn stubble field grows crows.
Dreaming of flight, I glide new roads. Driveway.
Engine block ticks down…frog starts. Evening.
Frogs full blast. I light a firecracker.
Golden Lotus brand. Shoot my paper gun.
Hold off. Let them start again. This is how
I say my name tonight. Something else I’ll
just say. The world’s jammed with miracles. Just
kneel. Behold grass. Blue caves. A corn kernel’s
light sings from one, tiny life dropped lightly,
now as darkness rises like ground mist. Now
opalescent, gold gone, it oscillates.
Pale milk tooth, baby moon, it becomes pink
quartz and vibrates with all other quartzite.
Rib Mountain’s quartz monadnock resonates
subtly in pebbles and nervous systems,
twelve miles west, a crystal set transmitter
upthrust two billion years ago, urging
vowels on evolving brains. Vibrations,
whale songs tease fillings. My teeth are a white
xylophone of voices. Exorcisms,
yoga, dentists yield before this yawning
zoo of noises— the inner sphere’s Muzak.
Winner of North American Review’s 2015 James Hearst Poetry Prize Award, and President of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Michael Kriesel, 53, is a poet and reviewer whose work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Antioch Review, Crab Creek Review, Rattle, Small Press Review, Library Journal, Nimrod, North American Review, Rosebud, and The Progressive. His manuscript Forgiving the Grass was a finalist in the ABZ Press 2014 First Poetry Book Contest. He served on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission 2006-2008 and was the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Conference Coordinator 2006-2012. He’s won the 2012 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Triad Award, the 2011 Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Contest, the 2009 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Muse Prize, and the 2004 Lorine Niedecker Poetry Prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. He was featured poet for the 2010 Great Lakes Writers Festival. He also judged the 2014 Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring Poetry Competition. Books include Chasing Saturday Night: Poems about Rural Wisconsin (Marsh River Editions), Whale of Stars(haiku) (Sunnyoutside), Moths Mail the House (Sunnyoutside), and Feeding My Heart to the Wind: Selected Short Poems (Sunnyoutside). He has a B.S. in Literature from the University of the State of New York, and was a print and broadcast journalist in the U.S. Navy 1980-1990. He’s currently a janitor at the rural elementary school he once attended.
Illustrations by Anthony Tremmaglia, an Ottawa-based illustrator, artist, and educator. His clients include WIRED, Scientific American, Smart Money, HOW, and San Francisco Weekly. Anthony is featured in issues 299.1, Winter 2014 & 299.4, Fall 2014. Find more of Anthony’s work at http://www.tremmaglia.ca/