David P. Miller
Against Being Stupefied
The morning glories’ quick life—
force sparked their tendrils
in a new direction, this late summer’s
overripening days. Risen from
the second-floor porch pot—twisted
through the wind-spinner’s stalled blades—
self-hoisted into the low branches
of our Evodia tree. Now, the Evodia’s
ornamented two ways at once: twined
purple blossoms, clusters of maroon fruit.
A small red-headed girl—three years?—
adventures around the block
with her mother, one hand holding
a stuffed white rabbit, shopping bag
across her other wrist. New ones to me,
these two, this second of September.
At the corner, daughter hesitates,
mother points their next way.
My story for them: It’s their first new—
neighborhood walk-around, the girl
learning to propel herself on the sidewalk.
Indoors, behind the curdled pixels,
contenders ridicule human worth as always,
as arenas-full of hands stretch to heaven.
On repeat: others’ depth of skin tone—
the turns and curves of vowels and consonants—
the topographies of their faces, versus a sea
of flagstaffs, high-relief triceps, and the star
speaker’s index finger poised to fire.
Next corner up-street, the morning’s black cat
paces to the No Parking Sign, pauses to lie
on the pavement, gets up and paces
as the expected man arrives to unlock
and raise the grate of the turquoise bodega
with sea-green steps. A lone end-season
cottonwood seed floats past a mourning dove
on a wire. The grate gaps just enough for the cat,
bounding straight upstairs to Las Villas Market
beneath the metal’s corrugated rattle.
David P. Miller is the author of Bend in the Stair (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and Sprawled Asleep (Nixes Mate Books, 2019). His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, What Rough Beast, About Place Journal, Solstice, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, SurVision, Vincent Brothers Review, and Nixes Mate Review, among other journals.
Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current presidential administration. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.