She’s not my aunt by blood,
so I’ve a chance to taste her.
In a dream, we’re in the cellar.
She scoops milk from the chest
my father thought he’d hidden
where once slept every letter
he left like his life, unfinished:
“dead is
death embodied
do not drink
the dahlia”
He decided death in ways most boys cannot
forget, but when gust snuck through the graveyard
to my aunt and curled her skirt like blossoms
curl to frost, I found forgetfulness in heat.
Nicolas Miller | Once a senior editor of the Allegheny Review at Allegheny College and a five year veteran of the workshop curriculum, I am a 23-year-old poet and laborer from Corry, Pennsylvania. In May, I had my first poem published in Pif Magazine.
He made it possible. He was formerly a fabulist.
He was faceless, but he was ugly, graceless
and he made everything disappear.
aligning
as fingers
deftly dance
on checkered
smooth plastic
disco stage
Adam’s countenance: beer cask-heavy
his eyes: glazed shallots
his smile: a split itself
Now take away the need
for moisture and the deteriorating
qualities of autumn. The veins
and stems will release as well.
Take away the release. Take
away the seasons.
When Taylor Swift was at the gym in Japan
she watched the muscled back of a man
moving up and down a heavy machine
made by other heavy machines for men.
of spontaneous human combustion,
of pictures with the Cherry Hill Mall Santa,
of a stapler after getting my wrist stuck to my teacher’s green bulletin board,
and on the tv
a drag queen
sharing her recipe
for sun tea
asks us if we want to
watch her take a break
and we take a break
Honeywell closed their Minnesota plant quietly
and the addition of warning stickers on album covers
would save the children along with D.A.R.E., Nancy
and Tipper directing the conversation, for some reason.
I read, I traveled, I, Lina, thief’s daughter, a discarded toy by the campfire
at night, my planets – burned by sparks,
burned by coincidences, in my eyelashes – stalagmites of ashes.
Because Phil Collins is for fools and old ladies.
Because the ocean’s too wide a body of water
for a commando to cross alone. Because gentlemen
never kiss and tell, and soldiers never share
their kill count. Because you teach the meaning
of words like ‘amorous’ and ‘varnish’ and ‘leave.’