“Fallon, Nevada” by Juanita Miller

Juanita Miller

FALLON, NEVADA

someone
once lived
in that
old tin
shack
it was
hot inside
like it is
in Fallon

Nevada
was in me
rootless
and wind-swept

his hot
wet
my dry
inland sea
fossiled
with big bones
my heart
a sutra
gone beyond

i said
don’t keep
your distance
my hot
old roof
will
cover you

from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
Tribute to the Greatest Generation

__________

Juanita Miller: “During the ’60s I kept a brass cricket box in which I invited friends and passerby to write a small message to put in the box. Years later I opened the box. I pasted the pieces randomly onto a large piece of paper. A poem was born. In my teens I read Whitman and T.S. Eliot.”

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