Bio
Michael Mintrom lives in Melbourne, Australia. His poetry has recently appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, Cordite Poetry Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.
Michael Mintrom
Self-Portrait as a Robert Rauschenberg Combine
Summer: The backyard studio's French doors
are flung wide, a Talking Heads album is playing.
Screen printed tee-shirts twist in the breeze.
We discuss pink flamingos and Florida.
A dusty service town, that's where we grew up. Trucks
and silos. In bed at night listening for electrical storms.
Everyone learned piano. Long smears of paint.
Photos of the family and lunar landings. Black and white.
Record shops, coffee shops, junk shops,
Saturday art classes. That's me at the desk, snowy
head down. Poems by Berryman and Ginsberg,
dark paint splatters, a map of steel plants.
We moved to Motor City. Go Blue. The TV always on,
Dad's baggy suit, spaceship dreams, and Lake Saint Clair.