After
Once there was a ringing phone.
Which was answered.
Words ripple out, float blithely off
as if they think they can disappear.
The heart may still beat—
but it is a beast
raging in its bone cage.
The mind curls in a corner—
must be whipped out of its lethargy
and forced to perform: gather
what is required, buckle
the children in the car, drive them to
their lesson. Necessary acts,
necessary order. The old life
flickers in the distance,
so beautiful now—
like a Rust Belt city
when viewed at night
from the window
of a passing plane.
ξ
"After" first appeared in Tar River Poetry.
Jennifer Stewart Miller’s book Thief (2021) won the 2020 Grayson Books Poetry Prize. She is also the author of A Fox Appears: A Biography of a Boy in Haiku (2015), and a chapbook, The Strangers Burial Ground (Seven Kitchens Press 2020). Her poems have lately appeared in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, The Night Heron Barks, RHINO, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.
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