Poetry from Michelle Brooks

Photo: Pranay Pareek

The Better Part of Yesterday

My heart is a deserted street
in the middle of winter, dead
leaves skittering in the dying
afternoon light. I am a stop sign
riddled with bullet holes,
pinpricks of sunlight streaming
through me. And you? You are
everything – the light and shadow,
the broken glass pane in which you
can see everything. You are a street
upon which I used to live, and I
don’t need a house to haunt you.
.

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Michelle Brooks has published three collections of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), The Pretend Life (Atmosphere Press), Pretty in A Hard Way (Finishing Line Press) and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit.