About Michele

Michele Battiste is the author of Waiting for the Wreck to Burn (Trio House, 2019), Uprising ( Black Lawrence, 2014), and Ink for an Odd Cartography ( Black Lawrence, 2009). She is also the author of several chapbooks, including Left: Letters to Strangers (Grey Book, 2014). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Memorious, and Women's Studies Quarterly, among others.

Michele has taught poetry workshops for Wichita State University, the Prison Arts Program in Hutchinson, KS, Gotham Writers' Workshops, and Teen Ink. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, she has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, AWP, the Center for the American West, the Jerome Foundation, and the NY State Senate. She lives in Colorado where she works for The Nature Conservancy, raising money to save the planet.

More about Michele Battiste

Ponderosa

First the seed. The cone it came

from. The hand that buried

it. The story inside. Story of root

and stem, rock and loam. Of drought

and storm and wildfire. Hundreds

of years

of story. Aiming for

sky, stretching to water. Enduring.

Voices chorus, each needle a

whisper. The story is difficult

to hear on still evenings.

The story is difficult to decipher

in the wind. But

listen. The nuthatch

sings it. The squirrel skitters its code

along thin branches. The river carries

the story to the sea. Needles fall

and the soil clings to every

word. You

know this story. Remember now how

you belong. The first time you heard

its rustle, the last time its cadence

shadowed your pulse.