New Poetry by Michael Keshigian

Unforeseen Endings

An old man lived here
before our purchase,
raised in this home,
he became a widower years later,
forced into reclusiveness
as a result of a menial pension,
lack of societal skills and death of his spouse.
It didn’t end well for him,
the neighbors say, always alone,
downsizing to three rooms
from eight that existed, enough to cook,
sleep, and exercise his passion for writing
in a six by ten area with a desk, chair,
and computer as necessary tools
to engage his fantasies
between appointed meals
at indiscriminate times,
piling dishes till the end of the week.
Stuffed in desk drawers
we found printed pages of returned manuscripts,
identified with his name and address
atop five to fifty lines of various poems,
tri-folded, but extended flat,
no longer restricted to an envelope,
the second drawer, a file,
compiling a record of those efforts
no longer imprisoned in the first level.
A lonely story related by isolated artifacts,
a story neither one of us considered
would become our own.
A home withered, released by time,
as if severed by an axe
from the expectation assumed
at all beginnings.


- Michael Keshigian 2019

Michael Keshigian’s thirteenth poetry collection, The Garden Of Summer was released April, 2019 by Flutter Press. He has been widely published in numerous national and international journals, recently including Red River Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Oyez Review, Bluepepper, Muddy River Review, Smoky Quartz and has appeared as feature writer in over twenty publications with 6 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)