November 26, 2008

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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