Tag Archives: Michelle Matthees

Twenty-Four Hours in Vladivostok

by Michelle Matthees

Fall 2013

It is tempting not to speak.
Rather, to breathe in cold catacombs
with eyes wide open.
I think I understand the way you hope.
In your mind, above, crisped spring:
white plum blossoms
icing up saplings. Belief is like this, getting
carried away by progress.
I cannot believe in history.
Still, the fisted buds flare
into wicks burning atop stone-
cold facades tipping deeper into silence.

Michelle Matthees lives and writes in Duluth, Minnesota. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program in Creative Writing. Recent work of Michelle’s can be found in PANKThe Prose Poem ProjectCider Press Review22 MagazineProofMemoriousAnderboDefenestrationism5 QuarterlyHumber PieSpecsThird WednesdayParadise ReviewThe Mom EggSou’westerThrice Fiction, and elsewhere.