Amy Miller

Full English Breakfast

is our waking to the wind biting broken teeth
into black clouds, rafters, drafts, handfuls
of wake-up hail thrown against the window.

He’s sullen, reluctant. One of us always is,
a turned lump turned away in a smothering
sauce of blankets. Somewhere, creaks

of the landlady—she warned us of the streets,
especially a lassie alone, a gentleman might
approach such a lassie, told us of her long-lost

channel crossing and the Moulin Rouge
like a dream that tugged her back to bed
to linger there, eyes closed. But we’re up

and packing, collapsible cups, single bar
of soap we share, plastic ponchos on top.
So bored with our own clothes washed over

and over in sinks, tent city of clean, that today
he wears mine, I wear his. Out the window,
pewter streets reflecting iron clouds,

a street sweeper clatters his cart of brooms.
Downstairs to that muscular bacon,
a wrinkled warm tomato.

Letter

If there is a lake, I hope you’re floating on it stoned
and pain is a sharp little star you wrote into your book

and shut. The last time I saw you, your body was so
thin. I hurried by. May I always taste that sour old coin

in the mouth. I hope your feet find balance in the bottom
of the kayak. May the bungees in the truckbed

snake their colors in the sun. May you rise from the trip
undizzied, reaching for the rail of the dock,

and journey home warm to wherever you will rest
or drink or seethe over everyone who didn’t call.

I keep writing you these letters.
I keep sending them like money.

Amy Miller is the author of Astronauts (Beloit Poetry Journal Press), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and The Trouble with New England Girls (Concrete Wolf Press). Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, and ZYZZYVA, and she received a 2021 Oregon Literary Fellowship. She lives in southern Oregon, where she works as a communications editor for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. https://writers-island.blogspot.com/