Long rivulet of me
strikes the ram’s horn.
My name hymns
god-bright in the lungs:
Loosen me,
revenant. Your absence
caused me to crawl in
the low fields
like a woman in war.
All that labor.
I’ve made a myth of it.
Dress billow-whips
my knees. Breathe:
body arch. Breathe:
body flutter. Breathe:
we linger. At the end
of anything, a lift.
Believe or leave
a breath—
Carly Joy Miller‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a finalist for the Stadler Fellowship. She is a contributing editor for Poetry International and a founding editor of Locked Horn Press.
*Image: Utagawa, Toyokuni; Hanaarashi. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
