Michael Larrain: poet, novelist, seller of beautiful flowers
One of the beautiful things about artists is the unexpected ways in which we encounter them. I went to college in Sonoma County, California, and make an annual pilgrimage back there. I usually stay with my long-time friends, Larry and Laurie. Last year I came upon a man selling blissed-out flowers from the back of his Jeep about two blocks east of downtown Cotati. Well, this year he was there, in the same spot again, and we got to talking about life, the universe, and how everything and everybody is sometimes discernibly connected and as it went we suddenly discovered we’re both writers. Michael told me about his novel, Movies on the Sails, and I told him about mine, featuring a character named Flowers. I asked him to submit some of his poetry for Fictional Cafe, and here it is. I’m reading his novel and plan to write a review in our Blog Department when I finish. A new friend, new art, and who knows what else, all from a simple flower. — Jack
Why Loves Keeps Calling
All these years later
your lips are still pressed against the glass
and there’s a taste on your tongue
you can never quite identify
Imagine a relaxation
deeper than sleep
yet shy of death
where you can say
all that you know
without fear
or reprimand
You’ve needed this
as water longs
for a hillside’s pure permission
So your body may be happy
So your mind may take flight
Now half of a sun
rises in each of your hands
a quarter moon in your heart
All at once
from the other side
a second mouth
is moving in obedience
to the same
soft commandment
Find me and I will tell you what is true
A Few More Minutes
The rootlets of sleep are but partially severed
The down on your thighs barely stirs
True wakefulness can wait
This is the birthplace of thisness
All we are doing
is waiting for the birds to start up
The sunrise is making more noise than us
Let me hold you a while longer
All I know of contentment
can be found within this tiny country
all I ever learned of peace
Poised above you like a parachutist
drifting down to all worlds new and other
I have kisses in plenty
as many as you have places
Give me your mouth
which has coaxed my own
into a tender humor
Hushabye, baby,
Keep your heart close to mine
Curl into me
Every curve of you is safe from harm
Be warm and happy
for a few more minutes
while the stars still sweeten the air outside
Your body has memorized
the table of the tides
so I can breathe
in time to distant waters
Just let me hold you
until the day begins
and then just let me look
Here is work fit for a man
Let my hands read you awake
Let’s find out very slowly
that we are alive
Your hair will tell us when the sky is filled with light
This singing is so perfectly meaningless
This is the birthplace of thisness
Picnic
(dream after hiking in Crane Canyon Park)
There was blue sky
between your belly and your breasts
There were whitecaps where we had forgotten ourselves
Someday came to town today
An orange took the whole afternoon
to roll off a tablecloth
The grass leaned one way and then the other
very dramatically
and the air trembled violently
as though at the vanishing
of a powerful and mysterious being
or like sunlight passing through a cold martini
We lay sleeping in the arms of dreamers
held by a forgetful world
A little girl pursued white butterflies
mistaking them for her fingertips
An apple took the entire earth
into its confidence
firing up eleven burners under the river
one for every hour in a stolen moment
and all of them turned down real low
Finally
a mango circulated like a goldfish
its flesh entering our kisses
and our kisses circulating through the blue
of the sky, the grass, the air,
the sunlight and the earth
until it was time to go
Next To Nothing
Now I dream like the earth when she’s been drinking blood
and sending forth blossoms to French the sky
When you walk on my grave
wear your best lingerie
your body a directory of detours
your breasts listening to wine breathing
Haunting you I can duplicate any camisole
swim into the form of a chemise
assume the pure intelligence of a rhinestone strap
I’ll be your next-to-nothing it’s better this way
After all
an understanding this rare
can only be reached
between a girl and her harem pajamas
C’mon
slip into me through sleeves so deep
your limbs will lead directly to Orion
After all
a ghost can be unfastened and still stay up
Should you want to summon me
merely think about buying a hat with a veil
and my silence will curve to bends into cupboards
and other chambers of a woman’s heart
A diversion created among the herbs
ends with little pockets of equinox
inhabiting you at night
and first thing in the morning
you’ll find a fresh wet flower lei
waiting in your armoire
That’s my afterlifepreserver
Promise me you’ll wear it just to dance around the house in
with nothing else on but your stockings
* * *
Michael Larrain was born in Los Angeles in 1947. He is the author of four collections of poems: The Promises Kept in Sleep, Just One Drink for the Diamond Cutter and For One Moment There Was No Queen, and How It All Came True: Poems for My Daughter.
Rainy Day Women Press of Willits, CA, has released a CD of Michael reading his selected love poems called Lipstick: A Catalogue for Continuous Undressing.
His novels are South of The North Star, Movies on the Sails, and As the Case May Be. His children’s storybooks are The Girl With the Loom In Her Room, Heaven & Earth, Homer the Hobo & Ulysses the Goat and Wilder & Wilder Still.
Michael lives in Sonoma County, California, with his wife and eight-year-old daughter, Wilder Kathleen the Rage of Paris Larrain. For forty years, he has been the owner-operator of the roadside flower stand, Flowers Not To Reason Why, in Cotati, and has long been a senior partner in the Way-Up, Firm And High-Tail It Bright Out of Town Detective Agency, a loosely aligned confederacy of shady characters devoted to the complete discrediting of reality in our time.
