Reflections with Michael Bay | Bryan Harvey

Michael Bay sits in the front row, 

and on the first day of class, 

I ask him: after the director? 

No, he says, after the angel.

Where is your God? I hear,

and I tell him: I last saw Optimus 

Prime on a U-Haul truck between 

Georgia and my understanding of Otis

Redding. We haul all sorts of baggage 

in our minds. As adults 

we drop acid in the seas 

and forget our friends 

with starfish eyes. Lucy 

resided neither in sky

nor pineapple. They plucked

her one rib at a time

from the dark earth. 

I read about the missing frag-

ments when I stumbled,

in the dark no less, upon

a hyperlink. My phone

recognizes my face—

unlocks itself like a conch 

shell full of echoes—

but my reflection is never

what I remember and never

where I left it in the mollusk

twist of time and Squidward.

Bryan Harvey lives and teaches in Virginia. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in FlashBack Fiction, MoonPark Review, Hobart, and No Contact Magazine. He tweets at @Bryan_S_Harvey. Most of his rough drafts begin on long runs and are never finished.