by Carly Joy Miller
Entire: my cistern
my crawlspace my coulter
all built for you: you
tobacco-breather,
cigarette nitid
and splendid,
a bedroom hymn.
You strip
my neck
of its brocade:
all the better
to tame. Goodbye
non-miraculous exterior:
I’m half myself again.
Only wood frames
a mattress, sheets
a shrine. You,
celebrant, open.
Serenade when
you praise, sweet
thing. Your aperture
no longer a bolted throat:
bellow me back—
I am in your hands you know.
Carly Joy Miller‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, West Branch and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the Stadler Fellowship. She is a contributing editor for Poetry International and a founding editor of Locked Horn Press.
Ovenbird Poetry 