We hide, we fold beneath the stair as hair flees the porch, skin scrams our windows, bones ride the roof. And where has the blood gone, hot from my shocked body? Hair releases the floorboards. Hair sails down the hallway, floats about our chimney. Hair rises from locust leaves, sings us asleep with crickets. Blood ponders our front gate. Blood filters the air. Wind drives our blood home. Our house an aorta, blood-dust in fan blades. We scatter skin at streetcorners. Skin smooths doorknobs. Skin rises through cedar chests. Sloughed skin trills across the transom. Skulls quiet the attic, while teeth unhinge dinnerware. Jawbones describe the sidewalk, tarsals beneath our toepads. The street slants with rib-dust.
David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. Poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, Hawaii Pacific Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Clementine Unbound, Constellations, J Journal, The Lily Poetry Review, Ibbetson Street, Redheaded Stepchild, The Blue Pages, and What Rough Beast, among others. His poem “Add One Father to Earth” was awarded an Honorable Mention by Robert Pinsky for the New England Poetry Club's 2019 Samuel Washington Allen Prize competition. He was a librarian at Curry College in Massachusetts, from which he retired in June 2018.
Art by kimama