Just Sepia

By Micah Ballard b. 1975 Micah Ballard

I refuse to settle

out of the true

choose to communicate

through pay phones and paper

out here in the country of McAllister & Steiner

we are the only Victorians left

& I wish I wouldn’t have said

that one something that one time

when what I really wanted

was to finish cutting the okra for the gumbo

& read Baudelaire again

his L’Invitation au Voyage

backwards reveals all of the magic

in writing that one can endure

each line out loud resounds perfect

all week I’ve been thinking about printing

a pirated book of such, nothing grand

typed on the Remington, 3x4, no address

no copyright and fifty limited

for whomever I run into

Source: Waifs and Strays (City Lights Books, 2011)

Biography

Poet Micah Ballard was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and earned an MA and MFA from the New College of California. He studied with poet Joanne Kyger and has written about John Wieners; the influence of the San Francisco Renaissance poets can be seen in his work. He has published a number of chapbooks, including Absinthian Journal (2002), Bettina Coffin (2003), In the Kindness of Night (2003), Evangeline Downs (2006), and Poems . . .

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