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SMOKEY OF THE MIGRAINES · MICHAEL MCINNIS
$10.00
McInnis’ thin-lined narrative poem forces the cosmos through the vise of a migraine, through the noir pinhole of a beleaguered hit man, a bad boy not only prey to the title’s chronic malady but to the suppressed but unavoidable regional histories of indigenous America and its off-kilter Christian complement.
Andrew Guthrie, author of Alphabet, and Paul’s Records
| Weight | 5 oz |
|---|
Read excerpts
speak to Smokey
in tongues
he barely understands.
They tell him
stories that
have no meaning.
The migraine
is a ghost
whispering
of death
and night
and blood.
The migraine
is Jackson Pollack
severing occipital
nerves
with paint.
The migraine
is the
plutonium
taste of meth
down the back
of the throat.
The migraine
is a creature
living in Smokey’s neck
reaching up
through his
brain
and pulling
each eye back
back down.
The migraine
is an itch
beneath the
straps of a
back pack
straining with
the weight
of its terrible truth,
of nails and screws,
bits of rock,
pieces of glass
and broken marbles.
The migraine
is the
mortification
of flesh
glazed with auras
and sounds
heard rumbling
under the skin,
rifling through
marrow.
The migraine
is a killing field,
manured with
the blood of
shell-shocked men.
The migraine exists
outside
ecclesiastical
boundaries,
a leftover
of Purgatory,
lingering
to plague
the unholy,
the lost ones
who left the Church
or turned away
from the light.
Smokey
can’t seek
the light
because
the migraine
is light,
diffused,
catholic,
exquisite
as if the blue
of Smokey’s irises
is a laceration.
Smokey hesitates,
a coronal hammer,
a brief pause,
a shadow on his grave,
like glaciers
stopped at
the edge
of the continent,
like the planet
shifting,
like the tides
frozen between
migraines
and screaming.
The migraine
is a vision.
The migraine
is vision.
The migraine
is a revolution,
a manifesto of
pain.
The migraine
is a running sea,
a Fata Morgana,
an ocular
horizon.
The migraine
is Smokey.
About the Author
Michael McInnis lives in Boston and served in the Navy chasing white whales and Soviet submarines. His poetry and short fiction has appeared in Chiron Review, Cream City Review, Naugatuck Review, Oxford Magazine, Unlikely Stories and Yellow Chair Review to name a few. His third book, Secret Histories, was published by Cervená Barva Press.
Interviews, Reviews, Media
Copyright © 2017 Michael McInnis
Cover photograph from the collection of Lauren Leja
ISBN 978-0-9993971-2-1
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
