This Time of Night
By Michelle Bitting
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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 is the author of six poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the Wilder Prize and named one of Kirkus Reviews 2022 Best of Indie. Her chapbook, Dummy Ventriloquist, was published in 2024 by C & R Press. Recent poetry appears on The Slowdown, Thrush, Cleaver, The Poetry Society of New York’s Milk Press, Heavy Feather Review, National Poetry Review, Catamaran, ONE ART, and is featured as Poem of the Week in The Missouri Review. Bitting is writing a novel that centers around Los Angeles and her great-grandmother, stage and screen actor Beryl Mercer, and is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.
04/10 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Chloe Martinez and local poet Ximena Gómez / The BBar at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free
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"redeeming emptiness!" - I am grateful for #tbt so that I had an opportunity to discover this poem.