Michael Tugendhat graduated in 2014 with a MLitt in creative writing from the university of Glasgow. His writing has been published in beyond borderlands and Morpheus tales 24. He is a member of the horror writers association (HWA) and the speculative fiction academic association.
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From The Dog’s Mouth
I heard this dog, one day
whine over its owner in
that consistent minute
when it staved off hunger
and looked at off—
shore birds, hale singing
glistening song
after song against the impasse,
as if stuck on repeat
was the world’s way of crying
for him, for that man. For the
emptiness of a room.
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Brother’s Lesson
The rue of any good man
is in how he can
cook an egg. Said my
brother being older
he knew how to handle
even the smallest
of eggs in his hands—
the quail that
bursts minutia into the
world as it births
in the pan and dies
with the same air.
He said—
it takes heart to crack open
something this fragile.
You’re just as likely to hear
this in a junkyard as you are
a church. At times cruelty is needed
with the belief
that once it’s cooked it can
be devoured in one short sitting.
When the sperm doesn’t want to say no,
it says so.
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Letter to a Future Lover
The planes wait for reproduction, bags inserted into cargo.
Answering to chicken or fish, & hating yourself. Courting another man
who was once a boy in Fayetteville. Dear love and lover, dear fire—
take my shy pride for anything underage. His tongue is a pine needle
that sips tree cider from lips too big to drink, too close to the brink.
The water stuck inside of a stone is where I am—
incessantly brooding in detention on spring break.
The heat is one hundred and one and in an hour I will be
wearing a suit and looking for my brother
in a garden without a single bloom.