ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2025
Tag: Michael Meyerhofer
AFTER READING ABOUT MY FRIEND’S HOMELESS SON SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE by Michael Meyerhofer
AFTER READING ABOUT MY FRIEND’S HOMELESS SON SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE
For Susan Vespoli
I remember my brother calling
from somewhere in South Dakota
to say he quit his job cleaning rooms
because they’re stealing his tips
and now he’s just wandering
along a sunburnt stretch of highway
and doesn’t give a fuck what happens,
maybe he’ll sleep in a park, maybe
a ditch or under a bridge, stop trying
to talk him into turning around.
Later, out of beer, he stopped
at some abandoned campground
and stared at muddy water until a cop
exited an inferno-crested cruiser
to ask if he’s okay, mentioned
dirty dishes and a help wanted sign
down the road – but by then, my brother
had changed his mind, maybe
he was wrong about the tips,
maybe it’s time he stopped running
from an abandoned law degree
and a mother whose kidneys he failed
to heal with a touch, so the cop
gave him twenty bucks and a ride
to the only bus station. I don’t see hope
as a flower – more like a bucket
that never gets washed. By hospice,
he was furious that I wouldn’t carry him
to the toilet, forgetting the tubes
already woven through his plumbing.
Then, five months after they told us
where we could stop to pick up
my brother’s clothes, phone, ashes,
I got another call from my father saying
my stepbrother had been killed
by some cop in Milwaukee, his back
too tempting a target as he ran
from a crashed car with broken glasses
and a handgun. They never met,
my brother and stepbrother – likewise
these cops from different states,
bulging hips and someone who worries
when they don’t answer. Yesterday,
my father confessed his newfound belief
in a flat earth – some nonsense
about wind speed, global conspiracies –
and I pictured a broad stairway
past melting bridges and rusty stars,
a sun that crisps the back of your neck
the moment you try to look away.
*
Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry – including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (free from Doubleback Books). His work has appeared in The Sun, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Brevity, Rattle and other journals. He’s also the author of a fantasy series. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.
Two Poems by Michael Meyerhofer
THE PROTESTS OF THE UNWASHED MASSES
Not once have I witnessed it:
the calculation that must proceed
every rotten cabbage,
every egg launched like Greek fire
at some dumb passing noble
pilloried for his misdeeds.
But I like to imagine the mob
gathering reasonably that morning
at their separate tables, so many
fruits of the garden laid out
in that first slant of light,
their stomachs still rumbling
from an inadequate breakfast.
Perhaps they called in
the children to help them decide
which radish was too far gone,
which turnip would be better thrown
than mashed into a bitter stew.
Later, there will be shouting,
lips glistening with spittle.
But for now, they turn each apple
in their hands, like a judge.
Which one looks sick?
Which one can still be saved?
*
THE LAMENTATION OF FUSED ANKLES
In the annals of human suffering,
not being able to wear shorts in public
might not rank as high as it seemed
those childhood afternoons
when my classmates moved about
as one sun-washed muscle,
circling pools, backstroking
through ballparks, a little less
separating them from what made
nuns scowl like wet kites –
amidst all that clenched laughter
not one single pair of feet
like womb-mangled T-squares
blooming into broomstick calves,
nothing to be done at the gym
though I tried with what moved,
as though it were possible to lift
all those red-wrapped bones at once
and somehow hold them steady,
and somehow spill nothing.
*
Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry – including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (free from Doubleback Books). His work has appeared in The Sun, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Brevity, Rattle and other journals. He’s also the author of a fantasy series and Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.