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      April 11, 2023Rhode IslandAmy Miller

      for my mother

      That summer in Misquamicut, when boys
      as ripe as roadside corn shot pool in darkened
      eighteen-over bars, I found the joy
      they buried deep in denim straight-front pockets—
      pipe screens, joints, and all the damp and salty
      wounded want my navigating hands
      could plunder. Home and sunburned, bedroom walls
      my gulag—no diary, no dolls—digging sand
      and ashes from the trenches of my shoes,
      I heard her laughing—late, in bed with Dad,
      no malice in her voice, in love—a girl whose
      moody boy came home for her with mad
      martinis, seven jokes to sleep on, sleep
      itself a garland he laid at her feet.

      from #27 - Summer 2007

      Amy Miller

      “When I was twelve, I wrote a story for an English class, and got an A. I wasn’t a good student, so my parents were thrilled, and made me read it in front of some dinner guests one night. My parents hadn’t read the story, and didn’t know the dialogue contained the word ‘bastard.’ When I blurted that word out, the adults were horrified, aghast—I might as well have thrown a cherry bomb in the toilet. That was my first inkling that creating something out of language could actually have an effect.”

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