Two Poems by Jeff Miller

 

Summer

Branches tighten their grip
with the fear of mothers
whose toddlers tumble
close to blades.
They tug against the wind's desire
to shake leaves loose,
to dislodge the fruit
of their loins.

Then they release –
heavy hips fall back
into the futon of summer,
little ones wriggling and laughing.

They brandish their green pluck,
their immortal cells.
They flaunt in the wrinkled faces
of the old scarred trunks.

A boy on a bicycle rides down
the tree-lined street waving
no hands. So as playing cards
tinkle his spokes 
he becomes a leaf.

Gold pours magnanimously out
for spinning dresses and photo-
synthesis and triple scoops
and the freedom of flags.

The sun presses in
the earth's rotations
like a father
at the Daddy-Daughter Dance –
all curfews lifted –
one last chance.

 

Communion

I knew my body
would be broken for him.

Wine drunk at the wrong
stop, I walked alone at night,
money folded in my sock
through the streets of Tepito.

The tarps tried not to rustle,
the windows not to blink,
but I know when something
lurks just out of sight –

an empty bottle, a lost
cockfight, a red skirt,
blue lamplight shards,
dancing knives –

he sauntered his shadows
out to meet me, covetous
and brazen as a mapache,
raccoon

drawn inexorably
to  fruity vapors
uneven gaits,
to otherness

but

Are you lost?
is all he said.