The Glacier
Issue Three
Winter 2024

THE FAVOR

Sometimes as a favor, I dream other peoples' dreams. 

I do it in their stead so they can sleep the sleep of dark 

silence, so they can take a crack at death. I encounter 

the simian faces of their weird hungry lovers morphing 

like wax, one into the other. When they awake refreshed, 

I am content. Come and get it while it lasts, I say rakishly, 

as if I'm still beautiful and the grass will always be green.

THE TYCOON

I was filling out the application to be a tycoon and I was being
careful with my handwriting but then I got to the section
on references and I wondered exactly who could speak best
to my latent tycoon potential. A minute later I found myself

on the phone with my mom. Hey Mom, I said, trying not
to sound like a pale weakling but more like a young tycoon
in need of a casual favor. No, she said. That salutation wasn’t
exactly a Yes or No question, I observed calmly. I could feel

her shrug into the silence. I can tell from your voice that you 
need something, she said, and the answer's No. Is Dad home? 
I asked. He’s waving the phone away as I speak, she said. I'll
take that as a YES, I said, because I’d already started tycooning.

Michael Bazzett is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Echo Chamber (Milkweed Editions, 2021) — and the forthcoming The Morpholigist (Milkweed, 2026). His work has appeared in Granta, The London Magazine, The American Poetry Review, The Sun, The Nation, and The Paris Review; his translation of the selected poems of Humberto Ak’abal, If Today Were Tomorrow, arrived from Milkweed in June, 2024. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, he lives in Minneapolis.

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