Michael Ford lives in New Orleans. He is the author of Swing One Hand, a chapbook from Ugly Duckling Presse. His poems have appeared in the North Carolina Review of Books, 6x6, and
Yawp: A Journal of Poetry and Art.

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"Consider these words carefully dear reader. There is a new & ancient sound slipping out of the ethers, and onto the radar of American Poesy! And quite frankly, not only is poet Michael Ford one of its very best practitioners, but his collection Carbon is easily one of the great standard measures of this moment. Inside this book you'll find the seminal & glowing extract of those ethers, synergies of thereness that have no cause or precedent, and, even more importantly, a precise transcription of the silent tick & boom of the mighty alchemies of life. Yes, these poems are big news! Think of these writs as a prelude to the strange music which will be heard by the future astronomers of dusty earth!"

—Dave Brinks
Founder, The New Orleans School for the Imagination

EXCERPT:

THE GHOST OF IDA WARREN

The morning brought embers
and coats thrown
on a bed, coins at a wall. And my heart
filled with red, red honey

and the sound
of water, a whole river
exchanged for paper and torn
so that the fish that swim the bottom
could be scooped into a pail. The sound
of trains sinking in an enclosed
space. The blind roar
of an apple tree in flames.

It is easy to say, “This field
follows the river for miles through the darkness.”