September 17, 2019

Amy Miller

ASH, A BROAD-BREASTED WHITE TURKEY HEN, AGE 8

Notice how she carves light out of shadow,
how feathers have parted in the way of old boas
and her eye fixes you sideways. Almost none
of her kind survive this long, her wrinkled neck
singular and lonely. Beak shortened, incomplete—
a scar of her time at the factory years before,
a gate meant never to open. Life does this,
doesn’t it? Sometimes moves right out the door
under somebody’s arm, or finds the one hole
in the wire.

Wings white, disheveled, parts of her
falling away, who’s to say old age isn’t
incandescent power? Just look at her light.
Imagine all of them living, living—like the two
you thought of setting free from the cage
by the field in October. How they watched you
standing with an ax you only brought
to fell bamboo—beautiful, thick nuisance—
when you stumbled on them, well fed and waiting
for November and their farmer.

Remember
the springed steel door—you could see
how it opened. You knew they’d never last,
wandering free and huge, their big fan tails
dragged like closed umbrellas behind them.
Ridiculous, illegal to do it—property, some
stupid law and your bleeding heart the butt
of Thanksgiving jokes all over the valley.
Remember: They looked at you, unafraid
and young. Like this old one looking out
from the photo, this Ash, from the safe
darkness of her barn where someone thought
to let her live, and then let her live.

from Poets Respond
September 17, 2019

__________

Amy Miller: “Earlier this week I saw an ad for a Chicago showing of the photographs of Isa Leshko, a young woman who specializes in photographing elderly rescued farm animals. Leshko has collected some of her work in her new book, Allowed to Grow Old, and the photos are some of the most moving I’ve ever seen. I was amazed—and horrified—to realize that I’d never seen an old rooster before, or an old turkey, or even an old cow; most farm animals are killed before they’re a year old. I was also struck by how noble these elderly animals look, with their grizzled beards and wrinkles and rheumy eyes. We all age in similar ways, if we’re—to use Leshko’s heartbreaking term—allowed to. For these animals, it seems old age truly is a gift. And for us humans, the photos are a reminder of where we are in our own evolutionary journey—still a long way from ethical, a long way from righteous.” (web)

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May 20, 2019

Amy Miller

THE TURKEYS BY THE ROAD CONSULT WITH THE DEER

Hey     don’t you love
this heat     this smoke     that car
slowing down     dorks
with their map     yes
get a good look folks     we’re wild!
too funny     yeah     you eating?
us too

from Rattle #63, Spring 2019
Tribute to Persona Poems

__________

Amy Miller: “Honestly, I hardly ever write in persona anymore. It used to seem like such a great way to break out of the ‘I’ rut, to take the photobombing poet out of the poem and turn the camera outward, which, incidentally, was my mother’s definition of maturity—seeing outside the self. But white writers like myself have always taken that too far, appropriating and fetishizing and diminishing people of other cultures by stepping into their shoes for a moment and pretending to understand their experience. Persona poems are at a crossroads. What viewpoints are we assuming right now that we have no right to assume?” (web)

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May 14, 2019

Amy Miller

TO WHOEVER INHERITS THE EARTH

If it still stands,
find the bench on the bend
of Crystal Springs trail with a view

of the cold lake
and cormorants. We were idiots,
but we liked this. Also cats on our belly

at night. Taqueria
windows white with steam.
A certain shade of lilac that painted

the hills
for a single week in May.
We had a saying about the meek,

but the crops
failed all of us equally,
the Earth so democratic for a moment.

We kept writing—
bless you if you’re reading this—
because to stop would have been death

before death
before death. To know
the mistakes we made, with everything,

made a long
and foolish memoir.
And what was there to do but write it?

We are
so young. Tonight
white blossoms blaze outside the door,

a scent
like spring has lost
its mind and pumped out all

the pheromones
in the arsenal. We are
so in love as well—this place—

three deer walk
down the center of the street,
lit for a moment, then crossing to the dark.

from Poets Respond
May 14, 2019

__________

Amy Miller: “The United Nations report released a few days ago, predicting that a million plant and animal species will soon face extinction due to human civilization—possibly causing catastrophic harm to our food and water systems—cast a pall over everything this past week. Like many, I’ve had even more thoughts than usual of mass extinctions, famine, and despair, along with a glimmer of hope that a finding this frightening may finally persuade governments to take radical actions to turn the tide. As a writer, I constantly wonder whether writing is worthwhile—I mean, will there be anyone around to read it in a few generations? I keep thinking of the line in William Stafford’s poem ‘Waiting in Line’—‘the chance / to stand on a corner and tell it goodby!'” (web)

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August 7, 2018

Amy Miller

TO THE FIREFIGHTERS SLEEPING IN THE YARD

Statistically, your mothers know, those hotshot
tragedies hardly ever happen. They worry more
for your lungs, your feet (twenty-six bones
of curled arboreal they once could hold). They worry
what you’re eating (warm burritos wrapped in foil,
handed to you by a shy two-year-old girl) and of course
they dream of horses running, a cat taking refuge
under a car that flashes, boils, melts, they dream
of the strange tornadoes birthing, devouring,
throwing metal and glass, dream of the houses
they raised you in, the thin roofs peeling up,
how the smoke whistles and crackles with its particles
that were everything, everyone it took, how it snows
its flecks of everything, everyone down like night,
like sleep.

Statistically, one grown child looks
much like another, sooty, spent, a war-stained face
turned away. This infuriates mothers, not knowing
if you’re theirs while they scratch at the screen trying
to blow up some twice-removed photo (taken by a man
whose house you saved with your axes that slumber
beside you and a single hose stretched to the limit,
now slack). But any mother (anyone) can recognize
this: the way you curl against the ground while catastrophe
shrieks on, how you (all of us) have to lay down
your weapons just for an hour and sink into that
dark old well of refuge, one hand between your knees.

from Poets Respond
August 7, 2018

__________

Amy Miller: “For the past two weeks, my home in southern Oregon has been surrounded by wildfires and choked with smoke. For us, it’s nothing new; people around here know more about evacuation levels, AQIs, and smoke masks than anyone should have to, and many locals are parents of firefighters. One friend recently told me that she doesn’t worry much about her firefighter son dying by fire—it’s rare, statistically—but she constantly worries about how much smoke he breathes in. When a photo of five firefighters sleeping in a yard went viral a few days ago, symbolizing the massive Carr Fire that tore into the city of Redding, California, two hours south of us, I thought of my friend and her son. And then a video of a little girl handing out burritos to firefighters in neighboring Anderson, a staging area for the Carr Fire, also made the rounds of social media. The older I get and the more I see, the more I get choked up by firefighters and first responders. They’re all someone’s kids out there, working their asses off for us. We can never thank them enough.” (web)

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December 12, 2017

Amy Miller

THE WORLD ENTIRE

In the pink video the rabbit
keeps moving and the man
could be a hunter or a drunk until
you see what he’s doing—he’s saving
you, world, the singed pelt of your panic
that’s running toward the fire.
You have this crazy impulse to go
home, regardless of how it burned,
is burning even now. The safe
little room remains in your mind,
the quiet, the bed. So you turn back
to the flaming ground, trees
screaming, blood sky, back
to what’s gone and what
you remember. But the man
won’t stop calling, as obsessed
as you, so now you run
toward him and his hand
finds some loose part of you
to pull and then suddenly
he’s warm and telling you
I have you. You don’t know
where he’s carrying you—
the camera stops too soon—
and it was only random math,
spark, ignition, two arcs,
trajectories that brought you
both here, but now
he’s walking you right out
of hell, both of you
so alive and surprised.

from Poets Respond
December 12, 2017

__________

Amy Miller: “Out of the horrible news of this week’s fires in Southern California came this wonderful, strangely moving video footage of an unidentified man saving a panicked rabbit from a raging fire along a roadside in La Conchita, CA. It’s hard to watch it and not think of metaphors of a world in flames and one person compelled to bravery to save just one soul, the one that’s in peril right in front of him. It brought to my mind the old adage of ‘Whoever saves a life saves the world entire,’ attributed variously to the Talmud, the Quran, and Oskar Schindler.” (web)

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April 9, 2017

Amy Miller

WHAT I WOULD TELL MY DAUGHTER ON HER FIRST DAY OF WORK

Don’t think of him as a father
despite sweet hugs and did you miss me
after trips, his arm wrapping
your shoulder in the hall as he exalts
your hair, your dress, then moves on
to the others, this family of women
you work with. The look his wife
will give you while she makes the coffee
at a weekend meeting in their house
has nothing to do with you. Then gifts—
silver necklace from Italy, Balinese orange
sarong. Then subpoenas, a lawyer
who will coach you to sit on the stand
and swear he knew nothing. You’ll leave
the courthouse on crutches—is this
absurd enough yet? Falling in your heels?—
and now you’re unsure of how much
shit you’re splashed with. Then
one night when you’re working late
standing at the postage machine,
he’ll hug you, sad and grateful,
and for a moment you’ll feel
sorry—his worry, his losses, divorce,
a twisted-up life, his angry sons
older than you—and he’ll kiss you
and pull you in, his body
a wall too warm, his hips
a rock stairway, his tongue slithering
into your mouth. You’ll
shove him and walk out
to your car and drive home
in one swift, unbroken movement
powered by a flywheel set
violently spinning, and it won’t
be until you’re miles away
that you’ll pound
the steering wheel and yell
I am so stupid. For a moment,
you’ll believe the late work
did it, or the dress,
or your hair, which you see now
in the rear-view mirror, wild
like one of those monsters
who turn men to granite
with a single look. But look
again—it’s you, your hair, your face
loved by everyone who loves you.
Remember that. You are nineteen.
There’s good out there somewhere.
You will find it, beyond the dark guardrail
your headlights are burning through now.

Poets Respond
April 9, 2017

[download audio]

__________

Amy Miller: “The news of Mike Pence’s “Billy Graham rules,” including his policy of never eating a meal alone with any woman except his wife, prompted a New Yorker article on the larger impact of gender-restrictive rules enforced in his offices. One rule is that only male assistants are allowed to work with him after hours, presumably to avoid a compromising situation. This makes me livid—if you’re that worried about being tempted to have sex with a woman who works for you, the problem isn’t her. It’s been nearly 40 years since a male boss preyed on me like that, but the experience is still an indelible part of my working life; it influences choices I make on the job every day.” (website)

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June 12, 2016

Amy Miller

I AM OVER HERE SOBBING

Under an infinite dome of expanding
night, the crickets recording
a high of one hundred, Hillary Clinton
is winning California and standing
with her daughter and wearing,
near as I can tell, a flak jacket
under that awkward coat and I’m
thinking, Bill with his hand in hers,
we don’t even know what
to call him, a president’s husband,
we don’t have the language
for it yet, and already I’m thinking
of who would troll me on Facebook
if I said that, of who would fire off
a foot-long rant—Monsanto
and shrill and bought and hawk—
and who would make a blowjob joke
out of that term we have yet to invent—
first husband? first man?—all clichés
taken already—and the all-caps
of the world are shouting
again in my head, even
my mother who said if you want
horses, marry a man with horses,
and I am over here sobbing
at the history writing itself
and for once I am singing
the national anthem, that part
at the baseball game where I normally
lower my eyes in silence, my hand
nowhere near my heart, as I try
not to think of bursting or rockets
or bombs but instead rest my eyes
on the grass with its millions
of green blades patiently growing.

Poets Respond
June 12, 2016

[download audio]

__________

Amy Miller: “On the night Hillary Clinton won Super Tuesday, I was watching her victory speech on CNN, choked up with pride and astonishment that we in the U.S. finally elected a female major-party nominee for president. The import of it, the implications, blindsided me in a strange way—I found myself obsessing over minutiae, like what we would call Bill Clinton if Hillary becomes president. I was struck by the idea that we are literally writing history. In my enthusiasm, I started typing up a Facebook quip about it, but debated and debated whether to post it, knowing that some of my other-leaning friends might attack me online, as I’ve seen happen so often lately. I decided not to post it. I felt like a coward, and a little like I was living in a police state. But I also felt like I was practicing an ancient form of self-preservation.” (website)

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