Jen Michalski
Associate Editor Molly Reid: In Jen Michalski’s lyrical poem-story, precise language delivers a fragmented, image-driven narrative that mines the space both on the page and surrounding the missing: “False starts: a wallet in the weeds, corpse-like shadows in coves where waves hackle through the water, bite the sand, and lurch away. Security footage, grainy syncopating bodies, sped up, slowed down, backward, forward.” Each time I read this piece, I feel gutted, haunted by the grief of those who have lost someone in this way, a grief that must be such a heartbreaking combination of hope and despair, a complex emotional state cracked wide open by Michalski’s raw lyricism.
To hear Jen Michalski read her piece, click here:
The Club of the Missing
What you learn: It is so easy to disappear.
What you discover about the tip line: that everyone looks like someone in this world. Everyone buys a bag of potato chips in the Piggly Wiggly at four in the afternoon after school and exits the store but some make it home and some do not but everyone has seen that girl or boy, every mimic of them in every state, and leaves a message. And some have never seen them but claim they have, lie about the details because they too are lost and have a need to belong to something.
Did you try sonar? the woman who has developed a liking for police-station coffee will ask. There are groups for everything: divorce, disease, death. She carries a manila folder to every meeting, its spine arched, fat, edges velvety, a sudoku of phone numbers, case reports, and badge numbers written across, a name on top. The divers can only dive so far.
So far the rescue can stretch, the bloodhounds can sniff, the helicopter can fly. So long the flyers can hang before disintegrating. So long the parties assemble with flashlights and hiking poles and theories. I think they’ve, like, finished their mission here. Jesus boy wipes his lips and caps his Nalgene bottle. They just vaporize into soul frequency. They just vanish into thin air.
What also vanishes: bowling leagues, book clubs. Sunday brunch and Saturday ballet. Weeks, months, years. The exact location of a mole, a laugh line. The sound of a voice.
False starts: a wallet in the weeds, corpse-like shadows in coves where waves hackle through the water, bite the sand, and lurch away. Security footage, grainy syncopating bodies, sped up, slowed down, backward, forward. There and then not. There and not.
Every morning, a new private message on the Facebook page. A pause before every click, a breath of resolve, wondering what this day will dangle, then snatch away.
