sort of day that really could go
either way. We would wriggle back into
our skin and search for wayward bits
of psyche that had sloughed off during
the protracted darkness. The romance of the
thing should have killed us; for some
of us, it still tries. I am
back at ground zero, doggedly
scouring the ruins for catharsis.
I trust that it, too,
will sear my flesh, but
will it cauterize the wound?
He(lium)
For one whose pockets are
bulging with random chunks of
wisdom, he is oddly and
consistently aghast. Repeating everything he
says no less than three
times, he tells me that the best
defense is an early start; that the
decision inherent in the act of squatting
is whether to stand again; that ideas
are like avocados (only a few are
truly viable); that it’s better to be
a mandolin than a guitar (for reasons
of mobility); that it’s better
yet to be a balloon,
whose heaviest thoughts are lighter
than gravity; that what can
be listed can be tamed.
Leave-Taking
She sports an unlikely pair
of culottes and, less surprisingly,
a beret. He opens the
hatch of her Subaru in
mid-sentence, and the wind
teases her cropped hair as she loads
a sticker-bedecked guitar case. Still holding
his coffee, he then delivers a one-
armed hug of nevertheless epic proportions. I
am not envious of him, exactly, or
even of her, but of the private
sheet of music crushed between them. All
around us, the world howls
for prestissimo, but in the
stillness of our orbit of
three, we are breathing in
whole notes; aspiring to largo.
“So, You Haven’t Forgotten Me.”
When I was a boy,
I detested working on the
car with my dad, because
I couldn’t stomach the grease.
As a teen, I did
what I had to do to remain
mobile, with little appreciation. Now a three-
time father with hopelessly grimy hands, I
would give anything for a sunny day,
a broken Chevy and a few hours
with my stubborn old man. When he
was born, everything was steel: the autos;
the men; even the pennies.
Tonight, driving the only car
he can hot-wire, he
delivers his message: “Just speak
of me in amazement sometimes.”
Metaphorically Freaking
I have abused our friendship
until he is hollow-eyed
with strain. I arrive for
visits uninvited and make him
carry my luggage, though he
nurses a limp. I yammer at his
back as we trudge through town, brandishing
my smudged agenda. He becomes rabid with
frustration each time we miss the train,
though I have no real intentions of
catching it. I seem incapable of giving
him the rest he deserves, and I
begin to dread the day
when he will throw down
my bags in disgust and
stalk off without me, leaving
me utterly and immutably wordless.
Fan Fare
No matter how accustomed you
become to fame, it must
be surreal to pull into
town and see your name
and likeness broadcast on a
larger-than-life marquee nestled beside the
highway; to know that countless thousands consider
your face each day as they drive
to work, a sterile place where t-shirts
to commemorate their agenda are neither printed
nor sold, and no one screams, or
applauds, or even really notices. Within this
commuter’s provincial grasp, though, is
a workaday solitude you could
never hope to achieve: a
quiet anonymity for which you
would gratefully trade your soul.
Stapler Fodder
I am wide-ruled paper
in the hands of a
suburban third-grader. I begin
life nestled with my peers
in a cheerfully-colored, graffiti-
free notebook. Tuesday finds me partially removed
at the perforation: torn, to be sure,
but tidily. On Wednesday we run afoul
of a marker and flee, only to
become hopelessly lost in a remote and
inhospitable corner of a backpack. By Friday,
my edges grow raw and shamefully uneven
as I am unceremoniously ripped
from the spiral. I shed
tiny fragments on the floor
and puzzle over the staggering
difference three letters can make.
The Unmistakable Prelude
Nothing can transport me like
the rasp of a needle
lowered onto vinyl—the initial
hiss and subsequent pops as
it skips onto the first
track—as if all sounds I’ve ever
heard are culled from the lead-in
groove of a circa 1977 LP. In
this way, the notes of memory are
seldom sweet and clear, encumbered as they
are with crackle and a bit of
pre-echo. This is not a tragedy
but a mnemonic device; not
a reflection on the song
but on the habitually distracted
nature of the artist, perfectly
reflected by an imperfect technology.
Capitol Hill
By nature and by necessity,
I am seldom fully present
in the moment, preoccupied as
I am with categorizing and
documenting it, holding fast to
the creed that as long as the
words flow, all else is salvageable. This
afternoon, however, the masking effects of an
early fall and the mesmer of its
adornment have snagged my attention and rekindled
my love for the city, like a
surprise visit from a favorite grandchild who
has become a woman overnight,
unabashedly clad in garments her
mother once wore. Like water,
she doesn’t ask, flowing where
she will, heedless of protests.
Creatures of Habit
He scrambles to the same
window each morning, smudging the
glass with his snout as
he watches me leave, but
I am perplexed by the
trajectory of his gaze: he always looks
to the rear of my vehicle. For
his part, when a thing is behind
him, it is no longer worthy of
his attention, but I am not so
inclined. Does he see something that I
do not? Do my inhibitions chase me
for fear of being abandoned?
Does apprehension cling in earnest
to the roof rack? My
mirror is empty, but evasive
maneuvers may be in order.
DIY Gone Awry
He is neither here nor
there, but so
mewhere between, habitually
and with dubious results attempting
to marry the two using
adhesives of his own formulation.
With the slightly unfocused eye of a
craftsman, he adds colors to his glue,
many of which do not technically exist.
Encouraged by the effect, and being at
heart a man-child hopelessly captivated by
anything that sparkles, he stirs in glitter
with abandon. To his dismay, the theory
does not translate well, and
the sight of a legion
of metallic renegades marching haphazardly
across his studio floor makes
him want to run. Away.
Road Trip
What I seek are not
words that can be found
nestled on a shelf alongside
shot-glasses and magnets at
a midwestern truck stop, but
they are souvenirs nevertheless, single-mindedly collected
on family trips no differently than a
disaster victim might salvage a small piece
of wreckage. I squint at the road
through pitted headlamps, and I know in
my frame that we are all battered
relics headed west; that our thoughts and
ambitions are just dog-eared
maps in the glove compartment
of a once-red 1969
Charger, leaking memories like oil
on the rapidly receding asphalt.
A Spin on Isaac's Wheel
I was born wide-eyed
and clueless into a world
liberally dyed in patterns any
child could appreciate. With little
transition, a chromatic shift induced
a rapid decline into biodegradable Amway products
and butterscotch upholstery; Avon catalogs and avocado
appliances. Before the tropical neons that followed
could reach the gaudy pinnacle of their
reign, the chemically-enhanced red of the
maraschino cherries in my mother's refrigerator lost
their savor, and I learned my first
real lesson in dying: that
color can be extinguished before
it has a chance to
fade, and sometimes the only
thing left is the leaving.
The Day I Discovered The Cure
How could I have lived
through that period of time
and never become acquainted with
the shinier side of their
art? In truth, I know
full well the consumptive darkness I nurtured
with wanton recklessness, but in the light
of the day the music comes to
me unadorned, not unlike a boy in
love, swinging his arms and ambling down
a carnival boardwalk with a tune on
his lips and barely a dollar in
his pocket. I am content
to watch him from the
crowd, drowning willingly in the
sea of good-natured winks
and knowing smiles around me.
The Dark Side of Bric-a-Brac
Darth Vader recently developed the
unsettling habit of discoursing from
the floor of the back
seat with each hard left.
A ceramic lamp that never
quite made it to the thrift store,
he would deliver unsolicited observations in a
disturbingly un-Vader-like soprano. Unable to
bear him any longer, I moved him
to the garage, but his disapproving silence
over its condition could not be tolerated.
The last time I saw him, he
was in the hands of
a random neighbor boy who,
now that I think about
it, has recently had a
rather pensive air about him.
The Poetry Nazi
She is impatiently skimming a
literary journal on her laptop,
eyes crossed and ankles slightly
unfocused, ruthlessly disregarding the essays
and fiction pieces in her
search for the few token poems concealed
amongst the rabble, as if anything with
uniform margins or more than a few
words between line breaks is unworthy of
her attention, and yet when she arrives
like a weary bookkeeper on holiday at
a modest island of verse, she presses
her lips together, shakes her
head and moves on after
only a brief perusal, a
cynical pilgrim who disdains the
company of her fellow travelers.
Bringing the Boys Home
Having completely forgotten the first
two occasions, I complete a
third circumnavigation of the lake
and, unshouldering the disproportionate weight
of my gear, find myself
at last in a modest clearing. I
had intended to fill the space with
a regiment of well-trained phrases and
perhaps a few less disciplined stragglers, but
the frogs and cows have already claimed
most of the camp. There is little
choice remaining but to squat by the
lake, catch bits of their
ancestral lore as they drift
over the rise, and calm
my troops as we await
our turn at the fire.
As the Streetlights Wake
Projected on a flickering sensory
backdrop redolent of playground noise,
fickle weather, and urine, an
almost palpable afterimage narrates the
sweaty tale of teenagers without
number that have crept with furtive backward
glances into this tiny cinderblock restroom, a
gritty summer sanctuary so laden with memory
it practically repels further occupation. Desperate for
privacy at any cost and ignoring the
unkind rasp of the wall against their
backs, they would tangle in a brief
and frenzied mash of lips
and skin, mentally rehearsing their
alibis, sampling the dusk with
their pores as only the
young and newly awakened can.
Overheard in the Orchard
"... which relates back to the
first imperfection!” Her nine-year-
old logic is inscrutable, exuberantly
delivered in the lilting, arm-
swinging tones of youth, confident
in the veneration of her captive audience.
She has already bounced out of sight,
but I am still reeling as I
regard the overripe fruit she has so
casually plunked in my basket (though she
didn’t know that she was giving, and
I didn’t know that I was asking).
Had I realized that personality
defects bore an anticipated chronology,
I might have attempted to
manifest them in the proper
sequence. Or, more likely, not.
Sign of the Times
Rousted by the cops from
a culvert that morning with
$4 to his name, he
still owned his preferences free
and clear, requesting his burrito
“minus the beans”. He spoke of how
his wife gave up on him; how
his cancer came back; how he lost
his backpack in a flash flood. I
don�
�t know if he’s “gone” or just
gone, but he’s no longer among the
wayward throng who cycle through his corner
like a cheap studio apartment
in a college town, where
the students come and go,
but the trees just nod
their heads and grow taller.
Machinations of Flight
He lives for the oddly
satisfying chunk emitted by the
library’s self-check device (and
the silence that follows). Ever
the industrious type, he is
borrowing voluminous tomes on the topic of
butterflies, a matter of great interest to
him since they took up permanent residence
in his chest cavity, apparently not as
short-lived as their free-range cousins.
He is to be regarded with the
same cautious ministrations employed by the conscientious
lepidopterist, who draws on photographs—
not corpses—to illustrate his
subjects, allowing them to resume
their unsteady migration, eyespots winking
conspiratorially with each breathless wingbeat.
August 43rd
Some might say it is
bad form to admit to
another that you had a
grand adventure together in your
dreams; that you journeyed without
passports well beyond the borders of logic
and propriety. I say, decorum be damned!
Tonight, we will venture out hand-in-
hand; speak lightly of weighty matters; ignore
the deaths of our fathers in order
to hug them again; place inadvertent low-
stakes bets in games we don’t fully
understand; wear purple pants (like
The Hulk); drink with strangers;
sing Otis Redding with perfect
pitch; and breathe through flotation
noodles until our heartbeats slow.
# # #
About the Author
Born in Kansas City and currently enjoying Colorado's magnificent Front Range, Brett Clay Miller is a locksmith by trade, the father of three, and a lover of words and motorcycles.