Michael Zinkowski

---

Today, the Sun Was Out; We Worked in the Yard

I didn’t even have time to change out of my work clothes.
I kissed my wife and my daughter and grabbed some gloves.

I shoveled rotting pumpkins from the porch, seeds spilling,
flies swarming, and slammed them down, splashing into the bin.

We plucked old sunflower stems from the sodden ground.
Even though they have no discernible smell, we sniffed daffodils.

We found sprouting camas and elecampane, buds on blueberry
bushes, lethargic ladybugs, psychopathic hummingbirds.

Our toddler took her camp chair and sat on the front porch
and said she wanted to watch the birds go by. Then,

in chalk, she drew a stove and grilled rocks. I know, I know
that the billionaires are getting a tax cut while the poorest

among us will suffer. I know. I am preparing the beds
now. There will be families this year who need fresh flowers.

* First published in The Stafford Challenge 2025-26 Anthology.

---

Fishing in the Creek Behind our House, Sort of

Since everything we do is pretend
these days, I don’t have to lie or explain
that the water is not clean enough
for the illusory salmon we unhook
from our willow whip rods bouncing
but not snapping, catch after catch,
and if we did have a chance
at catching anything it’d more likely be
typhoid or cholera
or a discarded mattress
or a pressure-treated pallet. Nope.
Today, we’re pretending no such thing
as chronic houselessness exists, nor fatal doses
of fentanyl, nor 40-ounce bottles cheaper
than bottled water. There’s no such thing as war,
so no veteran ever screams in a wet sleeping bag
under the bridge. This afternoon there’s no greed.
No sex worker died of hypothermia
this winter, right? Nothing goes to waste,
so no one ever goes hungry. No rape.
No sexual violence. No shame.
No unnecessary or weaponized fear.
This afternoon none of these things
exist, except the fat, King salmon that swim freely
through the pristine waters of Mill Creek.
And when the actual bucket is pretend full,
we make fish stew, and if all my slurping
and belly rubbing is believable,
it tastes like nothing
I could ever imagine.

---

Shake that Body

The beat drops, rattles the jars. The peach preserves
groove, the dehydrated morels shake, the elderflowers
bounce. Baby, let me show you how to do this.
The singer instructs—You’ve gotta move this.
But, she’s reassuring—You’re doin’ fine.
There’s nothin’ to it. And she’s right. There ain’t.
You see, my darling girl, me and you, you
and me, dancing to Technotronic after your bath,
while it’s cold and dark outside, while already-
corrupt institutions with possibly good intentions
crumble, while tech bros saunter their way into
the Treasury, while your mom and I seriously discuss
whether I’d lose my job if I were to be arrested at a protest
because some straight white men need to start
putting their voices and bodies on the line,
while fathers in the West Bank hold the limp bodies
of their children, we are somehow still free enough
for now, after a bath, to get the fucking wiggles out,
and it is perhaps the best example of the freedom
I feel—to be my five-year-old self again
back when my uncle hosted dance parties
in the garage he’d converted. Back before
bullies backed me into crippling self-consciousness,
I pulled bad breakdance moves in the flash
of DIY strobe lights to this song.
I held the hands of strange, older women
and danced my ass off to this song.
I lost my little innocent mind to this song.
Then I got shy and stoic for 30 years and only
danced if I drank enough.
And of course that’s an oversimplification,
but holding your hands and madly hopping
around our home to this song, right now,
Pump it Pump it pump pump it up,
feels like a fucking breakthrough,
feels like a physio-existential spasm untethered
and unleashed against all the bullies of this fucking
planet. Let’s dance harder, love. Let the jars drop.
The towers collapse. Nothin' can make this one stop.

---

Extra, Extra Garlic

Tonight, while she put our daughter to sleep,
my wife text-requested I make a frozen pizza

absolutely littered with garlic. So, after the dishes,
after the trash, after feeding the cat, after texting

her a .GIF of Ace Venture maniacally giving
a thumbs-up, after scrolling past masked men

stealing people off the streets in my own country,
after reading a different text that a friend’s son

hit his little brother with a baseball bat, making
me think he did it on purpose and spiraling

into a deep anxiety about boys who cannot or
will not empathize, I finally got my hands sticky

stripping the skin off, and smashing with the side
of a knife, clove after clove after clove of an entire

head, one of the few we grew this year
big enough, worthy enough of the work

a frozen pizza with extra,
extra garlic can try to do.

---

---

Banner Art:
Félix Vallotton, Le Rayon, 1909, Museum of Modern Art André Malraux (MuMa), Wikimedia Commons