Today’s Poem

For Michael

Thriller was my first
tape and it gave me fever dreams
but that could have been the hundred-
zippered faux leather jacket
that I thought would keep my cool
all that July.
Tonight I pray
that some of my heroes not come back
haunted, hollow-eyed, zombiefied,
howling or moonwalking over laws
of pop culture. Let them not chip away
what they once set in stone.

-Jason Braun