Joshua Michael Stewart Poetry | Influential American poet

Joshua Michael Stewart is a contemporary American poet and writer whose work blends honesty, intimacy, and deep reflection. He is the author of several acclaimed books including Break Every String, The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums, and Love Something. His poetry and prose often explore themes of family, memory, loss, resilience, and the fragile beauty of everyday life.

Stewart’s writing has been widely published in respected journals and anthologies such as Modern Haiku, Massachusetts Review, Brilliant Corners, New Flash Fiction Review, and Best Small Fictions 2025. His ability to transform ordinary moments—like a childhood memory, a cup of coffee, or a fleeting conversation—into profound meditations on love, grief, and time has made his work resonate with a broad audience.

His most recent book, Welcome Home, Russell Edson, is a unique graphic novel and prose poem hybrid, created in collaboration with illustrators Bret M. Herholz and Aaron J. Krolikowski. This innovative project reflects Stewart’s interest in blending visual art with poetic language, offering readers a fresh and engaging literary experience.

Through clarity of voice, lyrical simplicity, and emotional depth, Joshua Michael Stewart continues to establish himself as a powerful poetic voice of our time.Today we will read one of his best long poems.

BORN IN THE USA

We were pumping our fists with Springsteen,
chanting the chorus as Reagan galloped
the campaign trail, still pretending
to be a cowboy, and the old man who lived
 
in the blue house with the white fence
lined with rosebushes was handing out mints
from a bowl made out of a buffalo skull.
Uncle Bob chopped off his thumbs
 
in a metal press on his first day on the job.
My father returned to Khe Sahn sleepwalking
past our bedrooms, shouting out the names
of smoke and moon. He had a woman he loved
 
in Saigon, sang The Boss. Across the bay—
Ferris wheel lights and roller coaster screams.
Child Services found my grandmother unfit
to adopt. An ambulance in front of the blue house
 
with the white fence lined with rosebushes.
A white sheet. The bones and feathers
of a dead seagull—a shipwreck
on a rocky shore lapped by green waves.
 
On their lunch break, my father, my uncles,
and both my grandfathers, their names
embroidered on their grease-stained shirts,
stepped out of the factory and coughed up
 
their paychecks to their wives idling in Regals,
Novas, and Gremlins. Out by the gas fires
of the refinery. My father’s handlebar mustache
terrified me. My brother built me castles
 
out of blankets and chairs, larger than the house
that confined them. Taught me how to leap
off the couch like Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka,
how to moonwalk and breakdance. He’d go on

to teach me that disappointment’s a carcinogen.
My father took cover behind the Lay-Z-boy
in his underwear. My grandmother offered
a pregnant runaway a place to stay in exchange
 
for her baby. When the plant relocated to Mexico,
my father brought home a pink slip heavier
than a Huey Hog. The rosebushes became thorny
switches. Over ham steaks and mashed potatoes,
 
our parents poured out their divorce.
We had to decide who we wanted to live
with before leaving the table. I’d go
wherever my brother went: that meant Mom.
 
My father took a job out of state.
My mother took a boyfriend, who
dragged his unemployment into a bar
called The Pit, then staggered
 
into our house knocking over houseplants,
and I was the one ordered to clean
the carpets with the wet/dry vac. We’d sneak
out of the house at 3AM to swim
 
in the neighbor’s pool, or ping rocks
off hurtling freight trains. The city condemned
the blue house with the paint-chipped fence.
My mother’s eye, blackened. We slept in parks,
 
better than home. She stood at the sink,
sobbed, scrubbed blood-splotches
out of her white jacket with a soapy sponge.
Wouldn’t press charges. My brother bought
 
a dime bag and a revolver from a guy named Kool-Aid.
My mother was crowned a welfare queen, and drove
a Cadillac assembled out of political mythology.
I smoked my first joint on the roof of a movie theater
 
with my brother and the stars. An after-school ritual:
stepping over the passed-out boyfriend to grab
a Coke out of the fridge. We spray-painted
gang insignias across the boarded-up windows
 
of the blue house with splintered teeth. The boyfriend
could whip up one hell of an omelet. We didn’t hate
him on Sunday mornings. My mother’s stiches.
We swiped a bottle of Mad Dog, drank it while eating
 
peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. My mother stashed
bottles of gin in the leather boots my father bought
for their last Christmas together. Twice they called
me into the principal’s office because a knife fell out
 
of my pocket at recess. We turned abandoned factories
into playgrounds, busted out the windows with tornadic rage.
Somebody was asking for it, and somebody was going to get it.
I overheard a teacher tell my mother, “He’s going to grow up
 
to kill somebody.” Thanks to the Black Panthers,
this white boy had free breakfast at school.
My brother waited until the boyfriend was drunk
on the toilet to burst in swinging a baseball bat.
 
Later that night while taking a bath, I fished
out a tooth biting me in the ass. Backhoes
and bulldozers devoured the blue house
with the collapsing roof. We rewound
 
and played back the catastrophic loss
that plumed over Cape Canaveral
on our VCRs. The boyfriend slammed
a stolen van into a tree. She’d pour me
 
a bowl of Cheerios, pour herself a Scotch.
The boyfriend’s dentist kept good records.
“I’m sending you to your father.”
Son don’t you understand now? Front-page news:
 
firefighters dousing the mangled inferno.
Got in a little hometown jam. 
I stood before a judge, pled guilty to
shoplifting Christmas lights, the kind that twinkle.
 
 

Joshua Michael Stewart

Joshua Michael Stewart is the author of Break Every String, The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums, and Love Something. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Massachusetts Review, Brilliant Corners, New Flash Fiction Review, and Best Small Fictions 2025. His latest book is Welcome Home, Russell Edson—a graphic novel & prose poem hybrid created in collaboration with illustrators Bret M. Herholz and Aaron J. Krolikowski. website: Joshua Michael Stewart
 
There’s a fearlessness in Joshua Michael Stewart's poetry—tough, tightly written narratives and monologues about living poor with broken people (some of whom are your closest relatives) in hard times. This heartfelt gritty work reminds me of the hardscrabble accounts of humanity in some of our best poets—the work of Ai, Bruce Weigel, and Linda McCarriston's landmark book, Eva-Marie. Stewart exercises the courage of truth telling and takes the revenge of real poetic craft. As Bruce Weigel says "Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what." Or as Stewart says, "Poets are the battered spouses of hope." You can't help but respect the maker of these streamlined vehicles, for his guts and his unsentimental, vivid poems.
                                                                                                            -Tony Hoagland