by Michelle Bitting

My daughter was three and refused
to wear clothes. Naked on the living
room floor, she’d demand another round
of her favorite game, Pretty Pretty Princess,
then move the plastic rainbow markers
about the board—however, wherever
she pleased. Hair and legs wild, carefree,
splayed. She hated to lose and broke what
rules she had to while we laughed, astonished
at such nerve. Years later, she became a he,
and did what he had to, moving the markers
around wherever, however he needed,
winning the crown, himself, in the end.
Some rules are prettier, broken.

______________________________________________________________________

Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2023 CRAFT Character Sketch Challenge, the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 Coniston Prize and 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize. She is the author of five poetry collections, including Broken Kingdom (2018 Catamaran Poetry Prize) and Nightmares & Miracles (2022 Two Sylvias Press, Wilder Prize). Dummy Ventriloquist is forthcoming in 2024. Bitting is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at LMU.

by Michelle Bitting

Barreling down a coastal road, Supertramp’s
“Dreamer” takes over the radio, Roger Hodgson’s
fingers drilling the dash open. It’s the sound of 40 years
ago and a red tide—swarms of slippery, stinking fish
washed up—goners, all of them, rotting in a hot Pacific
shimmer. And my brother is there with me at a lunar edge
of wet: full moon glint, sulfur whiff, stiff bodies like spilled
quivers of small, silvery arrows pointing every whack way
around us, their stilled eyes wide like sinking babies flopped
in sopping blankets of shore, schools of strewn clock guts,
a splayed and gritty spawning. My brother and I sing along,
our car stopped, listening from the highway, letting the night
and sea chaos carry us: dreamer, you know you are a dreamer…

and we're in sync, somehow, same words, same starry string
of plinked notes chiming the night around crystalized breath.
It was like this: our skins close and a mineral breeze clouding
eyes, blowing back salt-ashed hair, the just-detected distant
spiral jetties. We unbolted metal doors to barefoot skate
the sand berms down, feel a cold crack of waves slap toes.
Stoned on weed and much too high to maneuver our muddied
minds and feet inside whatever plots we were churning, Brother, 
whatever in our youth we thought ourselves big enough 
to handle, whatever tides and misdemeanors, no worse 
than what your hand would steer our way—your demise, 
suicide—that ancient refrain recorded: a shocking dream 
that wakes in song, even now, the human and remains.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

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. Her chapbook, Dummy Ventriloquist, is forthcoming from C & R Press in 2023. Bitting is a lecturer in poetry and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University and in film studies at University of Arizona Global.

by Michelle Bitting

by Michelle Bitting

Oh Unadilla, Nebraska, I think of you,
old homestead to the women
in my family, your cows and cornfields
and bank foreclosures, your broken
banisters and cellars lined with jars
of slippery fruit suspended in the dark,
of great grandma left with all those children
to feed, cleaning latrines on trains
full of businessmen and cons. Thank
God for prohibition and the stove-savvy
females we turned out to be, the cooking
and scrubbing whores, sucking it up
like kitchen sinks, slick as coffee cans
full of grease. If anyone could make
the moon shine in a tub it was us. Who else
was going to feed them? Babies in their hand-
me-down dungarees, crooked teeth
and braids with siblings left to fill in
for who went missing, left to spoon
meal onto hungry tots’ tongues, landing
the grainy lumps like lopsided planes
in abandoned fields, mouths that swallowed,
stayed stuck. Then the runtiest ordered
to sit on porcelain plinths with timers
and firm instructions not to budge until buzzers
signaled a turd gone swimming. All this
so mama could make fire somewhere else
out of what she yanked from the earth, mashing
it to burnt liquid. What's deemed wicked.
What people will pay for when they’re dying for it.

*This poem was a semi-finalist in the SWWIM For-the-Fun-of-It Contest.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, won the 2018 Fischer Poetry Prize, Quarter After Eight’s 2018 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, and a fourth collection of poetry, Broken Kingdom won the 2018 Catamaran Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2018. She has poems published in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, The Los Angeles Review, Vinyl Poetry, The Paris-American, SWWIM, Love's Executive Order, The Raleigh Review, Green Mountains Review, Plume, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. Recently, she was a finalist in both the 2019 Sonora Review and New Millennium Flash Prose contests. Michelle holds an MFA in Poetry and a PhD in Mythological Studies. She is a Lecturer in Poetry and Creative Writing at Loyola Marymount University and Film Studies at Ashford U. www.michellebitting.com

by Michelle Bitting

And note to this day’s demise in stray
holiday lights blinking green and scarlet
splendor across our neighbor’s window.

One might wonder about people who leave
decorations fraying in February’s premature
thaw. Is it ache for a stalling of the cockroach’s

trek along a kitchen trail of crumbs, crude
sign the party’s past done? Or desire to keep
their costume balls rolling long after guests

wander home, capes and cracked tiaras
dragged through moonlit dirt? I want
to invite my neighbors in, share our best

canned mushroom soup dishes because magic
comes in tender buttons turned communal.
We could suck up fading majesty together:

mistletoe and fake snow glittering like in old
dime store displays where a toy train spits
real smoke in fleecy tufts towards stars

threatening to wink out. I’m sworn to a shelf
life of dust and kitsch with a view down
roads where gulls squawk better news

of fish on a rust horizon, where baby crabs
swish in with the brine, squirming through
our iced astonished fingers. I don’t fear

my death, only my children’s skills getting
on without me, despite their learned
mac ‘n’ cheese expertise, their crayon

brilliance triple mine and yet half
baked in ability to navigate the wilds
where a high noon glare can glow your skin

otherworldly or shrivel it to scrap.
I’ll have to mind these butterflies
swarming their young heads, painting

the town in winged, heavenly fits. I’ll have to
follow the fluttering maps, coats of gold
stretched wide like strutting models

launched from freeway shrubs. I’ll have to
know that anything can happen—there’s so much
room for good, and we’ll flaunt it. Like them,

we’ll flaunt it while everyone’s looking.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Michelle Bitting won the 2018 Fischer Poetry Prize, Quarter After Eight’s 2018 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, and the 2018 Catamaran Prize for her fourth collection of poetry, Broken Kingdom, which was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2018. Her third collection, The Couple Who Fell to Earth (C & R Press), was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2016. She has poems published in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, The Los Angeles Review, Vinyl Poetry, Plume, Tupelo Quarterly, AJP, American Literary Review, Thrush, and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Michelle holds an MFA in Poetry and a PhD in Mythological Studies. She is a Lecturer in Poetry and Creative Writing at Loyola Marymount University and Film Studies at Ashford U. See more at www.michellebitting.com.

by Michelle Bitting

We’re all in the same boat ready to float off the edge of the world. ~ The Band

When I should be asleep

but stay up anyway

step outside to sneak a smoke

behind the recycling bin

froth of soda cans

grass green bottles

spent water from France

a silo of silent witnesses

once effervescent

their colorful labels

torn and scraped now

glass shadows

cast to a rubber raft

under stars

the soft swish

of listing palms

that lean down

but can never reach far enough

lend a hand up

to new dignity.

We are not all in the same boat.

The lucky

find reinvention:

shelf sentinels

curiosities

emerald knickknacks

maybe something more

than holding someone’s luxuries.

Who knows.

Is there a purpose for everything

behind the human grind

beyond the shade

of blameless recycling?

Strangers in a truck

redeeming emptiness

sanctioned on the side

the traffic of coins

sputtered back

at disreputable living

a huddled shimmering

flatbeds

shuttled off in the dark

wet necks

liquid eyes

that glitter the night

shivering as their captors walk

fast from sight

pockets laden with gold

and don’t you just want to

turn them on their heads

shake them hard

til they break

til they shatter

like stars

spilling back

all that stolen brightness?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Michelle Bitting won the 2018 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, and a fourth collection, Broken Kingdom, won the 2018 Catamaran Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2018. She has poems published in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review, Vinyl Poetry, Plume, Thrush, Raleigh Review, the Paris-American, AJP, Green Mountains Review, and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes, (including Pushcart 2018 and Best of the Net 2018) and recently, The Pablo Neruda, American Literary Review and Tupelo Quarterly poetry contests.