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amy miller

The Weekends

One year I brought a telescope.
One year I brought a guitar.
One time my aunt cried all night
for her son who wasn’t lost.

One cousin brought huge bowls
of green beans from her farm.
One cousin brought her marriage
​and its two-hour calls. One brought 

a baby, and by day’s end we’d all 
converted to his smiling religion.
Some years I slept outside,
away from the drunken voices.

One year I spent an hour drifting
in a rowboat on a pond I could have 
walked around in a minute.
My mother took a glider ride 

not knowing how near she was 
to the end of her pitch and roll. 
One time I sat in a salon and watched 
four cousins get their nails done. 

I listened to them talk. The air 
smelled of fake roses and kiddie perfume. 
One cousin didn’t want to be there. 
She carried pressure like an anvil 

in both arms. They all sat in a row 
and laughed, her too, their toes splayed 
in rubber spacers. Their toenails 
gleamed like hard little candies.

S. Erin Batiste
Amy Miller’s poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Barrow Street, Gulf Coast, Tupelo Quarterly, Willow Springs, and ZYZZYVA. Her full-length poetry collection The Trouble with New England Girls won the Louis Award from Concrete Wolf Press, and her chapbooks include I Am on a River and Cannot Answer (BOAAT Press) and Rough House (White Knuckle Press). She lives in Oregon.
Art: My Mother Eating Clam Chowder by Jenna Lê 
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