University Town by Michael Homolka
Up steep hills which crack open like pebbles
the green-black ocean wanders
in the form of a human among low squat
brick facades old typewriter paper
and armchairs subconsciously within
lost as all academia to self-absorption
hands in back pockets inquiring
of the psychological grass whether it perceives
itself to flow uphill mostly or down
Joycean that is to say or Virginian
Sorting stackfuls of family photos
most of which it plans to toss out anyway
between existences the brainy seaweed
soaks up all possible inferences
as to the ocean Whether literal or metaphoric
whatever anyone believes in whatever
way they believe it : it’s the opposite
*
Michael Homolka’s collection, Antiquity, won the 2015 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. His poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, Antioch Review, Agni, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. A graduate of Bennington College’s MFA program, he currently teaches high school students in New York City.
