Michael Holloway

Biography

Writer of poetry and fiction. Born in Liverpool, 1985. He studied English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Central Lancashire until 2008, and got his Masters in Writing from Liverpool John Moores University in 2012. As well as poetry, he writes short stories and has written a novel.

Samples

Holofernes Judith, you make me think I am in love with you – but I am not. Your beautiful laughter while drunk is that of a dying man’s laughter now. The sun’s edge obliterates, burns what’s left of the night. It comes through like fingers touching the neck. Perhaps you think I am in love with you. But I’m not. You surrendered to me and slept with me in my bed – laughing still in sleep. Your laughter sent me away, and I slept soundly and drunk, feeling the roundness of your body against me. Holding you, knowing every inch of your waist. Breasts. Hair. Neck. By morning I was dead. You carried my head, bloodied and still as if in the middle of sleep. Haha, Judith, I destroyed your gods before you destroyed me. But still you take me to Bethulia and show me to your people. Paris Rain When the rain finally fell we were already running under the swell of an umbrella keeping us dry. She asked me what I wanted to eat. It was Paris, we could eat whatever we wanted. The rain fell silver on black with the red, no, green traffic lights weeping in its refection, every bit of light cascaded and swooped. Well? What do you want? The rain was more noise than water. We read a menu in a window and ran to another, and another, we ran huddled together like two old lovers – we could have been old, we could have lived forever looking at French menus in the rain and we wouldn’t have noticed. Soup du Jour, Foies de Poulet, Saumon Grille, I didn’t understand any of them. We chose somewhere eating salmon and she ate chicken, and we drank beer instead of wine and our clothes dried in the warm air. Sometimes we were unhappy, our eyes peeping and nasty, wondering what to say. I reached for my beer and touched her soft, wet hand. It was cold and moved freely with mine. She looked frightened as I held her, as if she could fall, and I felt it too, a fear that at any moment we could be eating chicken or salmon alone. Her hand firmly gripped mine, cold but warming now, and we laughed and listened to the warm rain outside. Anningan Super Moon 14th November 2016 A giant woman was pregnant in the sky and we all looked up at the birth. My dilated eyes black valleys, midnight, rested upon its crown, spilling into the world. I could see its creases. Its dimples and warts. Its cracks and craters. I stood in the stark cold, small clouds gaggling from my mouth rose to block it out, iridescent with purple pondered over its 68-year-old face. The round light lit up like a new Sun. It lit like a torch burning on the ground. Anningan came across the sky bald and burnt, roaming the black fields in a lightless dun. Forever equidistant to her, following bloody footprints through a dark rapist’s gulf. It began to sink and slump and as I looked at it in wonder I thought of following after it – it was so close its expressionless face limped at the cheeks, drooped jowls eternaled its sadness – but when it moved on, the sky turned black. Black. An old blackness that’s always been there. It made me happy to know I was not eternally damned to my own moments. A Time to Cast Stones Your eyes were stones cast across a muddy field. They had a kind of glister. They shone like silver in the moonlight, but it’s hard to find your eyes now in this world of rocks. A time to cast away stones, this click clickey click of them hitting each other. The rain is you crying. Your mouth was that low-hanging crescent moon as if the moon had fallen over. I remember kissing you, your spit just like water, your lips like the pulsing heart of a dying deer. I still see you on that hill, coming towards me with a made-up smile. Your pupils dilated, your irises shrunken. Your face fronting ships Eastward. Now, squashed up like an overripe fruit, falling apart so easily, it seems I turn the other way, see the stars shining, see the birds whining, see the ghosts murmuring, see something sprout in the cold wet field.

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