Wayne Miller is the author of four poetry collections, including Post- (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed, 2016), which won the Rilke Prize and the Colorado Book Award. He lives in Denver with his wife and two children and teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, where he edits the literary journal Copper Nickel.
He entered through the doorway of his debt.
blew the bills from the table onto the floor.
that lens-like architectural focus of his debt.
all this debt would be mine.
“The Debt” from Post-. Copyright © 2016 . Used with permission from Milkweed Editions.
the cars sat for weeks in long-term parking.
from among the cars of the living.
while I pushed the panic button on the fob.
many times but never driven it.
Originally published in Post- (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed, 2016).
so the mass of People before them compressed.
trapped, now, in the confines of those bodies.
full of People flanking machines designed by the People.
how they buoy us! the People shouted.
They fill them with bodies.
They spend hours piecing them together.
What else? They open their mouths.
And what else? Nothing—they open their mouths.
but what gives us the right to define them?
but aren’t we, too, the People? Yes, but wiser.
But sir, how can the surface be different from the sea?
teacups we clamored into at the county fair.
as I raced for shelter at the Wendy’s off Exit 10.
into the ice-cut window of my cell phone.
pouring sand from a cup into a sandwich tin.
of a test tube from some childhood experiment.
it seems ridiculous it can’t be righted.
Every day it slips a little more.
inside an engine already underwater.
to have any real sense of its scale.
of elevating men to this very position of judgment.
with light—the light his body fed.
(Later the guards cleaned up in darkness.
“The Humanist” appeared on the website 32 Poems.
“After the Miscarriage” appeared in Field. Copyright © 2017 .
“Ohio, My Friends Are Dying” appeared in Waxwing magazine.
the living stepped carefully among.
of what made us a nation.
“Carillon” appeared in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day. Copyright © 2017 .