E·ratio

Issue 21

 

 

 

From Where Nothing

 

Apryl Miller

 

 

 

 

My father will be cold when next I touch his skin

His fingers, long and fatless, arranged by a stranger

His eyes and lips, artificially closed and sealed

His legs, as he left them, stretched straight in front

His hair, eternally swept back

His right arm folded across his chest

The feet splayed out, not pigeon toed

His left arm by his side

His ankles and toe tips will be turning black

His hands, I’ll have to wait and see

His face looking like a movie skeleton

There will be so little fat left and the flesh shrinking in

His ears scrumbled to an unnatural shape and

Pinned there by the cold

His nose appearing more beak then human

His body rigid as the board on which he’s placed

His private areas swaddled with that final diaper

Dad

Oh Dad

Oh my dad

I will be I should be I should have been

Pried from your corpse

What I don’t know can fill many buckets

What I don’t know can fill many coffins

Many coffins can be filled with what I don’t know

Many coffins can be filled with my zero knowledge

There is so much I don’t know

Fill a coffin with my empty

Fill a coffin with my

My nothing will fill a coffin

 

December 1999

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poet, artist, designer, philosopher, Apryl Miller is online at AprylMiller.com.  Read her in E·ratio 20.  And read The Apryl Miller Interview in E·ratio 19.

 

 


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