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Poems

Untitled [III]

By Kyle E Miller From Issue No. 8

The secret is to stop flinching. The mosquito bite returns each evening at the Hour of its creation seven days ago, a Sunday. It doesn’t itch, only rises like evidence of a new bone. Hate is an iron rod in a rainstorm: its rust Poisons the strawberries beneath, flour white Blossoms turn orange, and the fruit dries up In the mouth of the last month of summer. I’m just a clay boy sculpted in the shallows As the mountain shapes moisture into rivers. Flies are named for the teeth of other animals - I would rather be bitten by a deer than a horse. A new trail is a loaf of bread, a skin of water, The melon of good and evil, which is to say, Everything. Meteor shower of frogs at my feet, And a dragonfly of prehistoric size. Words are a way of remaining alive: they fall in a Predetermined order from the childhood of time. How can I possibly remain present when the smell of Ripe strawberries ambushes me in the parking lot Beside the unexplored meadow? If you had drilled A hole in my head ten years ago and sent a worm Inside with your eyes, this is what it would have seen. Not a thought in sight. How does he stay in motion? But one day, he finds some thoughts that need thinking. Birds require at least 497 acres of air to be happy. A card at the kiosk offers to send me images of cranes, And to my surprise the 9-million-year-old fossilized Wing of a sandhill crane arrives six weeks later. The bone leaps from the bubble wrap and fuses With my left scapula: I may never reach the ceiling, But at least from here I can see where I used to be. I am the quiet thought you return to when all the loud ones have gone away.

About Kyle E Miller More From Issue No. 8