A.D. Miller has published five books of poetry:
The Sky is a Page, (Eshu House Publishing, Berkeley, CA, 2009);
Land Between, (Eshu House Publishing, 2000);
Apocalypse is My Garden, (Eshu House Publishing, 1997);
Forever Afternoon, (Michigan State University Press, 1994: Winner of the first Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, 1994);
Neighborhood and Other Poems, (Mina Press, 1992.)
For copies of these books, contact Elise Peeples
LITTLE BLACK GIRL, 1907, 1927, 1937, 1967 . . .
Black little girl
Black little girl
Ploo! ploo!
Black little girl
Not black
Ploo! ploo!
But Brown
You wait, you’ll see
You haven’t been down
In the world enough
Just wait Till
You come up for white
You’ll see
Ploo! ploo!
Good Friday on Bear Valley Trail, 1978
Leaving the City
Is easy enough
Aim the car
Accelerate
Over the bridge
Escaping the City
Is something else
When I carry my desk
On my back
My head stuffed
With dates and digits
Takes awhile for the trail
To work its stimulation
Into the cracks and creases
Takes time for the earth
To come up and meet each step
Takes time for worry to wend its way
Down, down through the week’s misery
Into the black clay and the small stones
On the trail
I meet my Shadow*
Blossoms convert
Color for gloom
In quiet places
Yellow iris
Purple iris
Mestizo iris
A civil wilderness
Living is elimination
Of what is dead in me
Inspiration in hanging moss
And lichen centered on rock
Creating soil
Redemption in rhododendron
My eyes bounce
From dogwood
To alder and bay
And back and back
I smell the downed oak
Freshly cut legacy
Of the last storm
Will I need
To follow this trail
To where it ends
In the sea?
Will I need to wash
In its water
To be clean?
*In Ibo cosmology there is a shadow world identical to our own.
THE INSIDE DOWN MAN
Yes, he was happy to take our picture,
digging the hole to plant
that tree in People’s Park.
He was neater than most of us,
clean shaven, smooth chocolate skin,
his natural trimmed like a crew cut.
No, he didn’t work for the Chronicle,
kind of free lancer. If we gave him
our names, he would send us copies.
Weeks passed and we heard nothing,
nothing, that is, from him. But we read
that those amongst us most gung ho,
oinking the loudest at the “pigs,” egging us
on to smash the windows even of our friends,
those super-duper “killem” shouters,
were John Laws, spread eagle scouts
and inner spy men, sent to play us cheap,
mess us up. And most of them took photos
for their files.
