Michelle Bitting
Summer 2023 | Poetry
Nocturne Sonnet
I can see you through the kitchen’s steamed up
window but you can’t see me here in the dark,
not my moon-sheened arms like Victorian candles
sparking when rats rustle the bushes, not the crickets
weaving ghost crowns about my head watching you
plunge your fists into a sink’s rust dome, erasing
dregs, the headless crusts of fish, Brussels sprout
flecks & basil dip that studded each plate until you
made them shine again. When smoothed & patted
planets align like children in their KitchenAid rack,
the gloss of life cracks and dies even in its greening, even
as days tower gold and long and I hear old winter's song,
the went away of reddening hours, the stay of love, but most
of all, my darling, most of all, when autumn leaves start to fall.
Michelle Bitting is the author of five poetry collections, Good Friday Kiss, winner of the inaugural De Novo First Book Award; Notes to the Beloved, which won the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award; The Couple Who Fell to Earth; Broken Kingdom, winner of the 2018 Catamaran Poetry Prize and a recipient of a starred Kirkus Review; and Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the Wilder Prize and recently named one of Kirkus Reviews 2022 Best of Indie. Bitting is a lecturer in poetry and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University and in film studies at University of Arizona Global.
Michelle recommends Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads and Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman. As well as Broker, written & directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, and starring Song Kang-ho.