Darkroom
Now we’ve come to a room for a psalm and a candle.
We’ve come to a stranger in a black suit
who not only begins with Nietzsche,
but ends with Nietzsche.
I think of my pillow and the last dress I wore
to a funeral—how I laid it on my bed
this morning and smoothed the creases.
A woman is wearing her furs on the bus
in this May, 5 o’clock light.
I’m in another time. A part of my self is
in the shadow flickering beneath the gap
of the door: back & forth, back & forth.
As in, I really did hear your question.
I brought you to the brink. You’re ahead of me—
you’ve inhaled my voice like bleach
spritzed into the air. And a boy’s mother
drips water on his upturned face
with a black umbrella. And an escalator
carries an infantry of happiness
down into the earth. Fuck it.
Confess. Then leave what is said
like a sonogram strip in the grass.
But the position of the hands.
I will always check for a match
on the mailboxes up the block.
I will look for the name in anyone.
Inherited Recklessness
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
- Larkin, “The Trees”
The mad man on the roof
yanks the gutter away from the wood.
The mad raven is putting its beak
into the feathers of its tail.
The mad physicist is satisfying a craving
for some neutrons.
The mad afternoon begins with a string
of black clotted clouds.
I’m telling you this from the corner
of a community herb garden.
I’m telling the thirteenth century
to part its lips and blow.
I’m telling the second-rate indigo pattern of that coat
to stop it.
I’m telling you that we’re far away
from the tractors in the soy.
This healthy cup of mint
water will clean your throat for Thursday—
this healthy temperament as smooth
as the nails in a monastery floor.
This healthy lacquer paint is being tasted
by the neighborhood children.
This healthy barrenness
sits in my body like a box of Saltines.
My fake ancestor has been telling me
to locate her bones in a field.
My fake can of sugar will rub my temple
with its index finger.
My fake tree will always return
to a box in the attic.
My fake box is fake
because its bottom isn’t taped.
I’m a long way from the industrial west
side of the city.
I’m along the river, standing on this rock
painted with an X.
I’m along for the ride:
I didn’t even know it’s your birthday.
I’m a long carrot growing
down into the fertilized earth.
Tyler Mills is the author of Tongue Lyre, winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award (SIU Press 2013). Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Believer, the Boston Review, and POETRY, and her essays have appeared in the Robert Frost Review and the Writer’s Chronicle. She has been the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. A graduate of the University of Maryland (MFA, poetry), she is working toward a PhD in creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago and is editor-in-chief of The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought.