William Michaelian: "Rain nails kiss the dance of the shiny road,"

a restless man named Kerouac once scribbled in his notebook. And now, more than fifty years later, I see a thousand tiny hammers hovering above the pavement and striking in rapid, silvery succession. Hammers without hands, lit from an unknown source — the sun tried and failed long ago, put out its last cigarette, they should have seen me in former years — the entire scene etched on the inside of an addict’s eyelid by Gustave Doré.

Recommended reading: Book of Sketches, by Jack Kerouac; Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, illustrated by Gustave Doré.

William Michaelian's work appears in Cosmopsis Quarterly 1; his two books of poetry are available from Cosmopsis Books.