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Michael McGriff was born and raised in Coos Bay, Oregon. He cotranslated Tomas Tranströmer’s The Sorrow Gondola and is the editor of To Build My Shadow a Fire: The Poetry and Translations of David Wevill, as well as two poetry collections: Dismantling the Hills and Home Burial, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selection. He is the cofounder of Tavern Books, an independent publisher specializing in poetry in translation. McGriff lives in Austin, Texas.

Photograph by David Newkirk.

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Drinking at the
Rusted Oyster

by Michael McGriff
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Whitecaps in the harbor,

the color of a dead cow’s eye
the moment it breaks its orbit
from the skull.
People on couch
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