Midnight at the Chevron Station

<p>Michael Malan is editor of <em>Cloudbank</em> (cloudbankbooks.com) a literary journal in Corvallis Oregon. He is the winner of Meridian's 2024 Editors' Prize for Fiction. He is also the author of three books from Blue Light Press: <em>Overland Park </em>(2017 poetry and flash fiction) <em>Tarzan's Jungle Plane</em> (2019 flash fiction) and <em>Deep Territory</em> (2021 poetry). His work has appeared in <em>Epoch Washington Square Review Puerto del Sol Lake Effect New American Writing</em> and many other journals.</p><p></p><p>Blake's ambition-To see a World in a Grain of Sand and hold Eternity in an hour-is Michael Malan's achievement in Midnight at the Chevron Station. Malan makes his midnight hold Eternity and his Chevron station show a whole World. This visionary collection is intimate taking place here in the land of you and me only but also vast a full report on what I saw when I looked inside the book of stars.                    </p><p>                                                -H. L. Hix author of <em>Constellation</em> </p><p></p><p>In his new volume Michael Malan's lyrics and flash fiction perform acrobatic marvels wherein the real magical and surreal collide yet they dance together in a harmonious and winning tango. These richly imaginative poems are musically alive and replete with small moments of grace and wonder as when the poet notices a parachute opening like a flower in the sky and that [i]t's not easy to stand up in a stiff wind and wear your hair like heaven. I love his touches of irreverent humor and his moments of Zen profundity that amalgamate fact and fancy memory and longing: Everything you desire has its place in your / favorite mirage. </p><p>                                               -Maurya Simon author of <em>La Sirena: A Novella in Verse</em></p><p> </p><p>What I find most intriguing about Michael Malan's Midnight at the Chevron Station is his use of day-to-day details that bridge to the historical and trail from there into the deeply imagined preserving a time and place and energy for us all. As he writes in The Vanishing Prairie: Everything / is alive even the pepperoni pizza in the oven. Each piece leads to the visionary and the edge of the metaphysical where We are all drifting in the language of summer.</p><p>                                               -Christopher Buckley author of <em>The Far Republics</em></p><p></p>