i pick at my fingernails
with my other hand
sometimes they come off
like stickers on book covers
other times i bleed
i play the drums
strutting down the corridor
our laundry hamper
under my left armpit
allows me to do air guitar too
i never got over
my ambivalence for existence
it feels petty and all too human
melodramatic even
to pretend i did not choose this
moment to be in
this poem that writes itself
i write myself i am a poet
the rutherford–bohr atomic
neurotic
i am barely present tense
i am past that
living in the rhotic
syllables with nuclei
gullible roboticist
treble clef metamorphosis
gentian root symmetry
pandering to the matadors
sitting on top of the coin-op
eye to eye with the sunset
lighting my last cigarette
with a burning world
turning about in lockstep
walking through the walls
of the are we there yet
cumulonimbus grand piano
nightsky on the moonrise
the maestro’s out of tune
the most of us out of time
the marching band on the bridge
and the never-ending dross
the radio silence cross-
examination and the
overbearing darkness
i fell asleep in once
***
Jay Miller is a book reviewer, technical writer, and poet. He lives in Montreal.
***
image: “Laughter and Tears:” Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.
Rejection Letters 