Stacy Boe Miller
The Dirt I Turn to Find Our Bones
reveals we break like river rapids
hiding swollen stones, our mouths
full of refraction, silt, foam.
We break like bread
in the grip of a messiah,
break like the morning
news—all you didn’t know
transpired in the dark.
We crumble like garden soil
in the palms of our fathers, crumble
like glaciers giving themselves
to the sea, like hair, brittle and letting go
of the dead. We burst
like stored-up belly-
corner secrets. We break
like flesh can break—surprising at first,
that crimson curl opening
like a flower.
Stacy Boe Miller is a recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Idaho where she worked as a graduate writing consultant, was marketing editor for Fugue Literary Journal and taught poetry workshops in local schools. Some of her recent work can be found in Copper Nickel, Midwestern Gothic and Mid-American Review, among other journals.