Short Story Library

 
Coastal warm breeze
off  Santa Monica, California
the sun turns salt
shakers upside down
and it rains white smog, humid mist.
No thunder, no lightening,
nothing else to do
except sashay
forward into liquid
and swim
into eternal days
like this.
About the Author
Michael Lee Johnson
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place [...]

I am old frustrated thought
I look into my once eagle eyes
and find them dim before my dead mother,
I see through clouded egg whites with days
passing by like fog feathers.
I trip over old experiences and expressions,
try hard to suppress them or revisit them;
I’m a fool in my damn recollections,
not knowing what to keep and what to [...]

Two thousand men on death row
in the state of Texas. I’ve never
been here, still I’m worrying
myself to death.Webs of worry travel fast,
scan over my memory bank
back and forth like a copy machine.
I refuse to get out of my bed
I’m covered with burnt dream ashes
held in custody my cobwebbed anxiety
sheets waiting for the lurking armed
system of [...]

Mindful of my lover
running late, as common
as tying your shoestrings;
I’m battered as an armadillos shell;
I put my bands around my emotional body
armor native to myself and walk like a stud
in darkness.
Everything in October has a shade of orange you know–
a hint of witch and goblin.
In the leaves between my naked feet
and toes, as I pace [...]