By Alice Miller
Looking out at a man’s name on a battered wingtip
in strong winds; was it planned that when
the cheap wing bends, the name stays steady?
What if it didn’t matter how much
you trod over the body of your mother, what happened
when you were younger, how you tried forgetting
and forgot to forgive. Something has to hold you: numbers, columns,
cards to swipe, books to shelve,
pints to pour. A life filled with fixed wings, with hard grasps,
with the grateful. What’s worth keeping?
Not the sad boy who blamed you for all the ways he was broken.
Not the man’s name on the wing, but
why not the battered wing itself. Why not the woman thinking.
Why not the river below, its lips wet, footprints animal.
What forked tongues come when clouds crack open,
when this sky’s watched you sleep all day,
and now lets down its darkness. There’s all night to stay awake.
Source: Poetry (November 2018)
Poet Bio
More Poems about Activities
Golden Hour
When you caught one to keep,
we took it home and I asked you to teach me.
You showed me how to spike the brain—
I thanked the fish, looked away, pressed down.
We bled it, shaved away the scales,
severed meat from bone.
I’m afraid...
A Wing and a Prayer
We thought the birds were singing louder. We were almost certain they
were. We spoke of this, when we spoke, if we spoke, on our zoom screens
or in the backyard with our podfolk. Dang, you hear those birds? Don’t
they sound loud?...
More Poems about Living
Spring Snow
A spring snow coincides with plum blossoms.
In a month, you will forget, then remember
when nine ravens perched in the elm sway in wind.
I will remember when I brake to a stop,
and a hubcap rolls through the intersection.
An angry man grinds...
At the Equinox
The tide ebbs and reveals orange and purple sea stars.
I have no theory of radiance,
but after rain evaporates
off pine needles, the needles glisten.
In the courtyard, we spot the rising shell of a moon,
and,...