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.

Four Poems

by Michael McGriff

The Cow

I used to think of this creek as a river
            springing from mineral caverns
of moonmilk and slime, but really
            it’s just a slow thread of water
that comes from somewhere up north
            to trickle its way out
near the edge of our property.

People on couch
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