As yet unpublished, but not entirely unpublishable, I hope. -- Jerry Miller
"ProsePoem: The Death of Randall Jarrell"
It may have been a strange sight -- a man trying to stare
down an automobile, on an old back road as untraveled as a shelf of poetry. But he looked straight into those
high-beams and dared them to go back where they came from.
The shafts of their separate visions crossed over the trunks of live-oak
trees like swords, or beacons at a movie premiere, playing kids' games while North Carolina had its back turned.
Before anyone could swim out and break it up, the strange man lay down in the road, his lights put out like the
last coals in a fireplace.
The automobile stared off into the distance like a woman in Robert Lowell's
window. Nothing left to see, or say, its motor still running.
The eyes of the night, thick as measles, blinked ever so slightly and went
on about their dirty business.
Copyright 1998 by Jerry Miller ©
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"ProsePoem: Golda"
There was at one time a young woman in our newsroom who called herself Golda.
She was taller than that, and slim as a brass candle holder.
She had a singing-chipmunk kind of face and great round haystacks of breasts.
She was Jewish and from New York, and she rarely let us forget it. Her life's
work was cussing like a sailor in an Oliver Stone movie.
She swore she would find the only remaining rich single Jewish man in the Bible
Belt and never lift a finger to prove anything again.
She finally left and went to Guam, where the odds were astronomical and in her
favor. Although the last rich young Jewish man had hocked his yarmulke and sailed for Indiana in 1599.
She cussed in the beds of sailors, who harvested her breasts like beefsteak
tomatoes. She rarely if ever cried in the cab rides back across the international dateline.
Later, there were rumors she had flown off to Florida, changed the name she
called herself to Monica, and turned into a mannequin in a department store window, wearing furs and constantly cussing under
her breath, which didn't bother the customers all that much.
Copyright 1998 by Jerry Miller ©
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"ProsePoem: The Boy at the Door"
I've met him only once in his life. It was deep in the bric-a-brac of his mother's
garage sale, when he was, oh, about five. He was pushed toward me like a bottle of beer across a dingy bar.
We had nothing to say to each other except Hi and How are you, Son? But we stared
at each other with a strange and knowing look that gave his mother cold chills. It was like looking into a mirror through
a long periscope.
We were curtailed finally by the sheer weight of silence, and the arrival of an
old couple searching seriously for second-hand glassware.
He had been born over the telephone, a wake-up call from a hospital where visiting
hours had been cancelled by martial law and the laying in of assault weapons.
A dozen years later, he resided with his illegitimate namesake over in the west end
of town. I came across his name in the newspaper once, getting a ticket for not wearing his helmet while riding a motorcycle.
His mother had already had her moving sale and checked out of town. The son stayed
behind to sweep up the broken, blackened glass, I imagined.
We still meet often in my life, at night, under the covers of darkness. I am answering
the knock at my door without wearing any helmet. It is that boy again, tall and restless, scuffing his toe awkwardly on the porch.
He looks me in the eye once more, and my blood goes stone-cold as a man shot in the back trying to slip out of a bedroom window. I
rummage for something to say to him and find nothing, except Yes, I once was your Father.
Copyright 1998 by Jerry Miller ©
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