My Severed Head
Jane Miller
I touch my forefinger to thumb
& straighten the others for bird
for a shadow on a wall
of Faithful Heart's hospice
a far cry she whispers
from Florida
I board her like a dog entirely
don't think I don't appreciate the gravity of my error
with mother in diapers by a window
the Catalinas to the east weighted by snowflakes
I come to surrender
strange barking every night—strays? coyotes?
~~~~~
Jane Miller's Midnights, poetry and prose poems, is Saturnalia Press artist/poet Collaboration Series, #4, 2008, with visual art contributed by Beverly Pepper and an introduction by C.D. Wright. Thunderbird, a book-length sequence of short poems, will be published by Copper Canyon Press next year.