Now that my novel is done and off to the printer, I’m taking a short break from writing seriously. Although, maybe this is a serious poem? Who knows, really.
A Sonnet for My Last Hinge Match By Michelle Garren-Flye
Let’s not fall in love, just listen a while: I can’t sell myself short, it’s no longer my style. I’m not even sure anymore what I want, and I’m not saying that just to taunt.
I guess my desire is for a hero of old a god shining above in a chariot of gold or winging across the sky on Pegasus. That’s why there can never be an us.
I expect starlit dance floors, fountains of wine, and you to be faithful, handsome, and kind. Settle for something less than? I won’t. I think I’m destined to wind down my life alone.
I know your bargain doesn’t include all that, so I’ll happily spend the night alone with my cat.
My last original romance novel was published in 2020. I believe it was at the height of Covid, when we all thought the world was going to end. I remember people caught on cruise ships and getting stuck because of Covid cases being detected onboard. And I bravely published a romance that took place on board a cruise ship.
Ah, those were the days.
No fear this time, though. Covid has been interwoven into our society (along with some other unpleasant things). So for my comeback, my first novel in nearly SIX YEARS, I chose to write a total escape romantasy set in 1700s England and featuring Greek gods. Yep. It’s like if Jane Austen met the crazy-ass gods of mythology.
Here’s the summary:
In a world where magic and religion are outlawed, the fates of a natural mage and a wandering god collide.
Callie has hidden her powers all her life while working as a kitchen maid for the St. Clair family—until one night when she is discovered in the woods by Samir, a servant of the Muses. Drawn to the beauty of her magic, Samir recruits his friend Dionysus to help him discover more about the young woman with extraordinary power.
Together, they embark on a search for the lost pithos of Pandora. The journey tests their love, expands their beliefs, and leads them on a wild ride from the excesses of London’s “season” to the mysterious depths of the Oracle of Delphi.
Can the new love Samir and Callie have discovered survive the demands of London society and the quirks of the gods of Olympus?
And here’s the final cover:
copyright 2026 Michelle Garren-Flye
Laws of Lightning will be released on February 28, 2026. I’ll be posting more about it between now and then. I’ve ordered my preview copy of it, just to make sure it really is going to look as good as I think it will when it comes out. Just FYI, although it’s a romantasy, I doubt this one would get even 3 spicy peppers on today’s spicy scale. Still, I’m old-fashioned and recommending it for 18+ readers. So approach with caution.
we will start a revolution under the willow in the park where you lay with your head in my lap while I read sonnets and odes and haiku and you and I store up ammunition that we fire off in whispered words to passersby (I’m Nobody, who are you?)
maybe they want to be nobodies too? and walk with us across the bridge —pausing to listen for Basho’s bullfrog’s splash— to the woods Frost knows and Whitman’s untrodden paths (and our souls rejoice in comrades)
the cars back up on the highway as we march hand-in-hand-in-hand singing rhythm and verse firing off our poetry bullets until someone comes with a real gun and the blood runs scarlet like Sandburg said (dreams go on)
and we wander lonely —where are the daffodils, William?— (and then my heart with pleasure fills) as we lay dying maybe we’ll hear at last the whistle of the balloon-man echoing far and wee ee
Photo and poem copyright 2026 Michelle Garren-Flye
This post is for a fellow poet, Renee Nicole Good, who was killed by ICE this week. Her death was senseless, brutal, and unjustifiable.
It was murder, and it was sanctioned by our government.
I’ll be honest, when I first heard about it, I thought it was just another one of the insane things that happen in our crazy-ass world. Our government is blowing up fishing boats and kidnapping presidents of other countries, after all. They’re locking up immigrant children in juvenile detention facilities known for child abuse. Americans are being encouraged to eat red meat, drink alcohol, skip immunizations…and don’t worry about not being able to afford health insurance. Our president is barely conscious, and those are his good moments. And there’s the Epstein files, which are undeniably damning to the bastard.
So, what’s one more dead 37-year-old mother of three in Minneapolis?
Except…shit. She was shot by ICE, she was a U.S. Citizen…and she was a poet and writer.
“Don’t kill the poets,” says the old Irish proverb. So writers have enjoyed this “immunity” for centuries, running around battlefields with press passes stuck in fedoras and “REPORTER” emblazoned on bulletproof vests. And yet, this is no proof against a bullet.
Reporters, scholars, historians, writers, poets are the first to be sought out by a would-be suppressive government. But in the end, there is another proverb that has proven truer than the first.
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”
The Poet Wins By Michelle Garren-Flye
This is how it begins: killing poets in the street. Let’s see who wins.
Grow some thicker skins, don’t be indiscreet: that’s how it begins.
They’re watching your sins: Big Brother brings the heat… But wait! Who wins?
No way out of these ins, just learn to keep the beat cause this is how it begins.
Shall we all become shut-ins? Bend the knee, become obsolete and let Him think He wins?
No, we’ll stand up against the spins. Face death, oh, it’s bittersweet! So this is how it begins… But in the end, the Poet wins.
Photo and poem copyright 2026 Michelle Garren-Flye
I recently saw a challenge from a magazine I’d love to get published in (Rattle.com) to invent a new form of poetry and I thought I’d done it. I even decided to call it circular run-on poetry. The rules are that it captures one moment in time in a single sentence and it circles back to where it started.
Well, maybe there’s nothing new under the sun, but turns out this is just a combination of two forms of poetry that have already been invented, run on and circular.
Anyway, it was fun to try, and I have enough rejections as it is. (Also, just a note that the first line of this poem was written by a friend in a simple Facebook post. She’s such a poet, even her Facebook posts come out poetically! Check out her work here: Sheila Turnage.)
Engagement
In the tall grass on the way to the chestnut tree halfway across the field beside the highway that wends its way through hills to beach I’m waiting, eyes on the clouds, waiting to see
you, walking through the grass to the chestnut tree
but you pause on your way to our fun, while roots dig deep under the ground beneath and break up the dirt for the seed to germinate up through the earth to the warmth of the sun
and a floating bee lights on the bloom with delight
and I’m still waiting, eyes on the clouds, dreaming of driving the highway that wends to the sea with you and your flower (but not the bee) away from the tall grass and the chestnut tree.
Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye
Has it really been almost a month since my last post?? Horrifying.
Well, not really, because I think that was about the time I realized I needed to get my next poetry book together. I’ve been working on it for the past year, and I knew it was done, just needed to be put together.
So…with that said, here it is!
Presenting:
Here’s the description: “Author and poet Michelle Garren-Flye has always been fascinated by poetic forms. In Thick & Thin, Michelle explores the relationship between two of her favorites, haiku and sonnets, using the one to inspire the other. Two forms from very different cultures, yet somehow very similar. Is it possible William Shakespeare might have befriended Matsuo Basho if he’d been given the opportunity?”
Thick & Thin is currently available on Amazon. It’ll take a few weeks to get them printed for the store, but then you’ll definitely be able to get a copy there!
Home is the mountains of North Carolina. At least, that’s where my hometown of Brevard is. As I’ve now lived on the coast for longer than I grew up in the mountains, I sometimes wonder where “home” really is. If my blood was once the red clay of the mountains, surely it’s now mixed with the Crystal Coast seawater.
It wasn’t totally my choice to set down roots here on the coast, but I can’t say I’m totally sorry I have. And I definitely don’t feel as at home in my old hometown as I do here in my new one.
But oh, those mountains. I spent a fair amount of time outside during our stay. I walked with my son and his dog in the little neighborhood where we stayed. We all hiked through the gardens of Biltmore Estate one afternoon. The steps we got that day! We spent a day touring the Western North Carolina Nature Center. The animals were mostly asleep while we stood gaping at their beauty.
And in the evenings, a glass of wine in hand, I sat on the front porch looking out at the trees, wondering if I ever moved home would the roots I had put down in the sandy soil of the coast re-acclimate to the mountain soil?
Starting over is not something I’m great at, so I won’t be doing it anytime soon. I love my life here, and I don’t want to leave it.
But oh, those mountains. They call me still.
Written six months ago post Hurricane Helene, whose destruction I saw in person for the first time last week. Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye. Not for use without permission.Oh, those mountains. 🙂 Someday. Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye. Not for use without permission.
I’ve never used the haiku to springboard a different type of poem than a sonnet…until now. This is more freeform, or at least, it took on a form of its own. (Unless this type of poetry already has a name?) Anyway, I couldn’t pin this one into a sonnet format. It’s a bit more sprawling.
alabaster white pottery shards strewn about just flower petals
Unglued By Michelle Garren-Flye
Seeing white shards among the green grass I pause to remember shattered china on the strange orange floor of the kitchen, no sooner broken than regretted, gathered up and pieced back together with glue.
But these are just magnolia petals dropped carelessly from an angelic bloom to the peace of the smooth emerald below, and the tree has no regrets, emits no sighs, but stands tall, rich in nonchalance.
Maybe it’s time to throw out the glue and mow the broken scraps under so I can grow something new.
Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye
And so it’s done. And it was really fun. A challenge indeed. Perhaps some rest I need.
Sonnet 15
Fashion Flash
Purple is the color this spring; from coast to coast, it is the rage. Don lavender attire when dressing— perform a twirl as you take the stage.
Forget the pinks and greens of yesteryear; cast off rose-colored raiment and robe. Today’s tint is arrived, it’s here! Making a mark all around the globe.
Try on every dress but discard each? You can’t expect to become a violet The iris, too, is beyond your reach. Such finery, no, you can’t acquire it.
But…maybe it’s better not to pretend? We can only be ourselves in the end.
Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 