Michael McGriff was born and raised in Coos Bay, Oregon. He cotranslated Tomas Tranströmer’s The Sorrow Gondola and is the editor of To Build My Shadow a Fire: The Poetry and Translations of David Wevill, as well as two poetry collections: Dismantling the Hills and Home Burial, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selection. He is the cofounder of Tavern Books, an independent publisher specializing in poetry in translation. McGriff lives in Austin, Texas.

Photograph by David Newkirk.

If You Are Water

by Michael McGriff

Tonight, the whiskey fires burning
on the moon move through me
like a hammer swung in the dark,
and if you are water the moon
is painting itself across you.

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