Cling by Michael Jackman
Michael Jackman teaches writing at Indiana University Southeast, a regional campus of IU Bloomington, just across the river from Louisville, KY, known for the derby, bourbon, and now an embarrassing governor. A drop-out from Queens College, where he studied music composition almost to the bitter end, he left his native Queens County for Nashville on a dream of breaking into country songwriting, but discovered himself more poet than pop-country versifier. After graduating from Belmont College as an English major, he headed slightly back north to earn an MA in creative writing/lit from the University of Louisville, and scaled the heights of academe as far as an almost-Ph.D., then edited two online trade mags, rode the dot-com boom all the way to Nepal on a journalist-trekking junket, freelanced feature articles, and, somehow, still managed to enter academia after a while. Jackman completed his MFA in poetry from Spalding University’s Low-Residency Program, working with poets Maureen Morehead, Debra Kang-Dean, Molly Peacock, Randall Horton, and Greg Pape. He now lives in New Albany, IN, on almost 2-acres, with a woodlot, 6 chickens, his beloved life-partner Sarah and her five-year old, their two dogs, and rescue kitten Naomi, formerly conceived of as “Futurecat.”
Michael crosses a suspension bridge along the Himalayan trail.
postcardpoemsandprose.wordpress.com 
I really like the combination of language associated with pool and science (increased friction, new trajectories) to illustrate how every person we meet has an effect on us, no matter how miniscule (well, that’s what I think the author is saying 🙂 )
marion
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