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riding the El,
you press a special red button:
bing! the passing windows light up
in miniature. Cornell boxes,
illuminated peep shows:
not the owl any more
than the broken-off leg of a doll is the girl,
or the woman she grows up to be,
ragged with grief and knowing then
that what is seen in windows
is only the framing of light.
at the torso of a man
visible in the vapor of his shower,
fooled into imagining
him to be the whole man,
because you've glimpsed a part.
his habit
of setting out a red geranium on the sill
(every morning)
before he leaves for work
and his taking it in upon his return.
for two whole people,
and what are you to do with the red petal
that has suddenly blown in through the open El window
except to sweep it back out?
for the light to turn green sees instead
a red petal falling through the air
and believes the sky is full of flowers.
Alyce Miller
(Published in "Seneca Review")
"I read and write poetry as both an antidote and a
complement to fiction and nonfiction. Writing poetry,
one can often access subjects and ideas that become
lost in prose. With poetry, the pressure is on language
and line, the sheer pleasure of words and sounds. Poetry,
like short fiction, is often about compression and
distillation, but shares with it the urgency of expansion.
Many people say they don't understand contemporary poetry
and don't enjoy reading it. I find I get much more out of
poetry if I read it aloud. There are contemporary poems
I've read that just take the top of my head off and haunt
me long after. There are others that leave me baffled,
but thinking."
Alyce Miller, IU Bloomington
Comments: homepgs@indiana.edu
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