Poetry by Colleen Michaels Published in Nixes Mate

Colleen Michaels, the Director of Montserrat’s Writing Studio, has had two new poems published in Nixes Mate!

Michaels’s two pieces, “Hunger is a Suit Like Farrah’s” and “Rescues” appear in Nixes Mate’s combined 16^th/17^th issue. Colleen says that “Rescues” specifically is “part of a collection working on about ‘embellishments,’ including both exaggerations in family mythologies and the bedazzled-clothing variety.”

Michaels also hosts The Improbable Places Poetry Tour, which brings poetry to unlikely places like tattoo parlors, laundromats, and swimming pools. Yes, in the swimming pool. 

Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Barrelhouse, The Paterson Literary Review, Mom Egg Review and Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press). Her poems have been commissioned as installations by The Massachusetts Poetry Festival, The Peabody Essex Museum, and The Trustees of Reservations.

Nixes Mate is a literary magazine and bookstore founded in 2016 and named for a small island at the outer limits of Boston Harbor.  In their own words, they “feature small-batch artisanal literature, created by writers who’ve been honing their craft the time-honored way: one line at a time.”

Michaels’ poems can be read in their COVID 2020 Issue. Excerpted below are the first four lines of “Rescues.”

The Charles River bass my father caught and brought home
to briefly bang the walls of the murky tank of our living room.

A goldfish won at the Burger King parking lot carnival.
We blew too heavy on his gills, cried when he bloated in a teacup.