Poetry by John Miller

Another Untidy Pilgrim from Eugene Walter's Kingdom of Ghosts and Monkeys, John Miller slept with his dictionary as a child. His poems have appeared in Rust & Moth, Rockvale Review, Poetry South, Oyster River Pages, and elsewhere. Fernwood Press published his collection, How My Father Became a Boat, in 2025.

Brooding

My friend can’t stand the sound:
the way cicadas relentlessly saw time.

Unlike me, he grew up swathed
in the rich silence of deserts.

Meanwhile, in the land of kudzu
(and revisionist memory)

sounds sheet like rain, carom
off the surface of the night,

infinitely enact the argument:
Katy did (no she didn’t) she did (she didn’t).

Insects without names take turns
charming the inky dark. Through it all,

dual broods chant in counterpoint,
weaving a heartbeat vast as night.

Their roar turns me to my holy book,
where I learn that to brood, literally,

means to incubate, to hatch by heat—
figuratively, to birth by rumination.

I think of the lifetimes wasted pining
for a past that never was—how nursing hatred

born of lies birthed generations of monsters.
I imagine the South’s dueling histories—

palimpsests endlessly rewriting themselves
—and wonder: will we ever emerge together?

Apricity

All at once it lands on you
in a chilly stairwell or parking garage
—some relentlessly gray place

weighed down by countless sighs:
something less than hope
but a measure more than memory.

Wintry mix shrouds the night
and streetlights make
murky ellipses in the dark.

Beyond their cryptic grammar,
the highway hums its dull thrum
through winter’s bare trees.

Still, you know April will come:
a world aflame with so much life
you’ll have to learn to breathe again.

And even as ravenous cold nips
at your flesh, your body remembers
the promise the sun makes.

I Know it’s a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird

But ever since springing forward
one wingéd Casanova has it in for me.

At dawn, he belts from the privet
under my window—an hour before daylight

—ceaselessly wooing would-be lovers
with his captivating imitation of a car alarm.

My recording angel will just have to put this
(and so much more) in the proper context.

True, the bird isn’t eating up my garden,
but he is most certainly nesting

in the corn crib of my sleep.
And though I understand his need to sing,

he still owes me that mile
and at least as much space to dream.