Weekly Read: “Drought Pastoral” by Michael M. Weinstein
BLR‘s Weekly Read newsletter brings you one outstanding story, poem, or essay from our archive. This week’s read is “Drought Pastoral” by Michael M. Weinstein, which won BLR‘s John and Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry in 2022, selected by judge Crystal Valentine.
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I wanted you, desert
you red incorruptible
parchedness perched on
the earth’s bone shoulder
songless as the hot
wind soughs through you
and the dump truck windows
gleam like opened blisters
at high noon. Today I
heard the grass growing
whispering its one shared word
blade to blade until the whole
green lawn knew it…
Why this poem?
I love the musicality of ‘Drought Pastoral.’ Lines like, ‘parchedness perched on the earth’s bone shoulder’ and ‘where once your pleats of rockflesh clutched a silver seam for boys like me to rip and scrape the clots of bounty out’ make me really aware of how language tumbles and turns in our mouths. I also admire how the poem kind of juts down the page like this beautiful rock formation.”
I love the musicality of ‘Drought Pastoral.’ Lines like, ‘parchedness perched on the earth’s bone shoulder’ and ‘where once your pleats of rockflesh clutched a silver seam for boys like me to rip and scrape the clots of bounty out’ make me really aware of how language tumbles and turns in our mouths. I also admire how the poem kind of juts down the page like this beautiful rock formation.”
– Sarah M. Sala, former BLR poetry editor
More from Michael
Michael’s debut collection of poems, Saint Consequence, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in August, 2025. His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in the Boston Review, The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, The Adroit Journal, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poets.org. Michael is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ and disability communities. Learn more about Michael on his website.
In 2022, Sarah M. Sala sat down with Michael after he won BLR‘s John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry. Listen to their full conversation, prefaced by Michael’s reading of “Drought Pastoral,” below!