Michelle Seaman

CONTACT:
Email: michelle@michelleseaman.net
Website: https://www.michelleseaman.net

BIO:
Michelle Seaman’s poems appear in Porkbelly Press, Rogue Agent and 3Elements Literary Review. She has a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Art from Columbia College Chicago, and she’s worked as a Creative Workshop Instructor, English Teacher, and Assistant Editor. Michelle loves to wander in the woods or ride her bike in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin.

PUBLICATIONS
Grant Me the Tooth ( chapbook, Porkbelly Press, 2022)

Poetry

Hard Flower

That kiss
was matchwood smoke
and Big Red gum –
acrid-good, salt
and sulfur, fleeting
heat, hint of cinnamon, then
sugar. Your kiss
            was a swing
set on a bridge
           over a river
rapids below
           whoosh  high-tickle

and drop-dizzy. I felt

lucky as a Jack  
pine cone,
resinous, wood rose,
closed
among thin needles
and held
to a slender tree
that needs a fire.

Wild, we
fell
           away from the party, the noise,
           the boys who trusted us
to land
quiet
on the front seat
of your car.

If we had lived the gum jingle
and kissed a little longer – if we had
acted less than fugitive, my hard flower,

I might not sniff the forest
after a burn. I might not insist

that every kiss
prickle –
hot
and
worth the melt.