Adeena Karasick and Michael Dickel will host an exciting tour of Israel that will hit highlights but also delve into the unusual. Throughout, the tour will inspire, prompt, encourage you to write with workshops, performances, and lots of deep language play.
In the developing neuro-network, gaia, quantum determinism
unfolds into refracted realities, glimmering sparks, momentum
of free will…
Winter window Outside the opportune window one pink head survives above geranium leaves blowing in the winter wind, covered with cold rain dropped from dimmed desire. The basil released its hope in the face of the war— forces of December and January— mere stalks rising above the window box, darkly silhouetted, […]
She’s slept for a couple of years, nearly, but the woman with a beard has asked to return, and I have obliged her and the toad whose garden she sometimes tends. They can be most insistent. If you have not read some of her history, you can search […]
I wrote the first draft of this poem twenty years ago, give or take a few months. Although I have sent it out many times, it never seems to have caught an editor’s attention. So, time to let it fly on its own here. Perhaps you will see […]
Summer Summer prattles on like a chorus of croaking frogs about all of its deep pleasures with open desire, while winter indulgently listens, knowing the strength of her own secrets. Parties all unfold this way. Spring tries to enchant, while fall quietly stands by, his eyes glinting with […]
Another Cup of Coffee Before I Shower It’s nine in the morning and I’ve been going for hours. The ground shook in Nepal, the riots in Baltimore— the preachers praise the winners then they blame the sinners, but all I think about is another cup of coffee before […]
This is not a poem; it’s a fake.
Someone else’s words, images, metaphors
creeping on cat’s feet into my mind,
clawing their way to the top of my consciousness
as though they were mine, mined
Two poems to go with paintings of Greenland. Art by Judith Appleton, poems by Michael Dickel.
Programming cultural DNA The troglodyte tree emerged from its cave exactly when three lights lit the evening sky on the New Moon that fell before the birth-month of mother owl. Just a hatchling of course, in her first month, and a growth to maturity away from motherhood—but she […]
Yesterday in Pansy Bradshaw’s memory, may it be for a blessing for gary, as he grieves Parents of an infant girl prayed in thanks at the Kotel after so many years believing they “didn’t merit” a child— the weather nice, reasonably warm for October. At the light rail stop […]
It wasn’t the sharks I lost myself, drowning in waves of sunshine and fear. During stormy weather and when it was clear, I dove underwater to stay out of sight—that is, until sharks came that one lonely night. They struck at my legs and I knew […]
The following flash fiction responds to a prompt (the photo above) from the Short Story and Flash Fiction Society, for their second flash fiction contest; the story is 392 words, not counting the title (or this blog-post introduction). Moshe is our son’s name, he is three (almost four), and […]
In Tzfat this Evening The Klezmer festival music plays on and the fireworks blast into the sky exactly on time at ten, brilliant and loud. But the ceasefire broke apart before then, hours before—and Code Red sirens blasted in the South, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, shortly after […]
As the War Continues i That war in the little southwest strip, its violence drowns out all sounds— words drain of meaning and become white spaces against blood-red paper. The numbers rise up, a large pile of bodies reaching toward the sun to ignite and burn, a pyre […]
UPDATE 6 January 2017: The book is out! Published December 30, 2016. Read more here. Current working title: Riding the Chariot The Toad’s Garden This post invites you to preview my next book by following the tentative table of contents links (below). I’ve been working on a book […]
The Poetry Reading Saturday evening, 29 March 2014, as I scurried about the house preparing to head out to participate in Jerusalism’s Wordplay reading, one of the organizers called me. Lonnie Monka told me that the photographer scheduled to cover the event had to cancel at the last minute. Lonnie […]
Nothing Remembers
by Michael Dickel
At Indie Booksotres
The Palm Reading after The Toad's Garden
by Michael Dickel
At Indie Bookstores
War Surrounds Us
by Michael Dickel
At Independent Bookstores
Midwest / Mid-East
by Michael Dickel
At Indie Bookstores
Meta/ Phor(e) /Play 